In Cape Town, Karel Rode (Western Cape Security Special Interest Group) and Craig Balfour (CLUG – http://clug.org.za) spoke about more viruses and worms that are worming their way into the majority of desktops.

We were discussing VOIP with a selected panel of industry experts and government decision-makers on this subject. The panel included; Mr. Alan Levin (Renowned African Internet Activist), Envir Fraser from the Department of Communications, Mr. Andre Ferreira (VoIP Networking Specialist) and Richard Heath (Attorney from MWEB and ISPA).

This response has been drafted to a request by the Department of Communications to the Draft Convergence Bill that was made public in December 2003. Read the full report here.

Dimo Calovski from the UNCTAD Electronic Commerce Branch spoke followed by Wendy Seltzer who chatted about the role and transformation of civil society organizations in the information society.

Wendy is a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Covered by ITweb

Representatives of ISOC-ZA were in Cape Town from 14 May 2002 to 17 May 2002 to submit ISOC-ZA’s submission on the proposed ECT Bill, as well as to actively participate in the hearings and make an oral submission.

One of the earlier archives is of Mike Lawrie in celebration of 10 years of Internet Connectivity To commemorate 10 years of leased line Internet connectivity in South Africa a function was held at the IBM Conference Auditorium, Sandown on the 28th February 2002.

Mike Lawrie gave an informal talk entitled ‘A funny thing happened at Rhodes one day’. Anecdotes about the early days were also read out during the function.

The inaugura annuall ISOC-ZA Merit Award was presented to: Mike Lawrie for his outstanding contribution to the Development of the Internet in South Africa. In addition, the ISOC-ZA committee unvieleld its plans for the rest of the year. See notes and links from the Network Startup Resource Centre for historical information

ISOC-ZA has submitted comments on the SA Government gazetted new Telecommunications Policy Directions.

The Cape Telecommuniucatiions User Forum (CTUF) was initially formed as a civil society group to participate in telecommunications policy making. Since this was effectively an Internet Society it decided to reestablish itself and join the Internet Society. Details of the six submisssions made by CTUF at http://www.ctuf.za.org