We’ve been inundated with calls and e-mails from many regular readers of the Daily Mail & Guardian, The Teacher, PCReview and Q websites who have been unable to access their daily online fix for the past week.
The reason is that Internet service provider (ISP) M-Web, which owns two-thirds of the website, last week took a unilateral decision to block access to all its sites to dial-up users who do not have an M-Web subscription. Sadly, this block affects the Daily Mail & Guardian (www.mg.co.za), Q (www.q.co.za) and The Teacher (www.teacher.co.za). However, corporate networks and international traffic will still have access.
M-Web’s official stance is that the move is part of a deliberate plan to create “a profitable and sustainable long-term business”, and it borrows heavily from the paid media model used by online providers like America Online.
We believe there’s a far greater principle involved, and are fighting M-Web on the issue. We’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, we apologise for the inconvenience. And if you don’t have
access to a corporate network, you could try using www.anonymizer.com, which masks your ISP address and should give you access to our site.