In the mid 90s, while still in high school, Matthew Tagg founded Web Africa, one of South Africa’s leading ISPs. We sat down with Matt and spoke about his humble beginnings selling hardware to generate funds to bootstrap his ambitions for starting an ISP with partner Rupert Bryant. We discover how they went from ducking out of lectures to attend to support calls into building Web Africa into a 100M+ a year company with 115 staff.

We also talk about his latest movements, like stepping down as CEO and handing over the reigns to experienced telecoms executive Tim Wyatt-Gunning (Tim and his partner started Storm Telecoms which they sold to Vox in a massive transaction several years ago).

Matt plans to move to Silicon Valley this year to build a new business and he gives us the inside scoop into what his future plans are.

Matt also discusses the uncapped saga that MWEB started a few years ago, how SEACOM has effected the South African internet connectivity landscape and we speculate if Telkom will ever drop their mandatory line rental fee.

Before I give away too much, watch the video – there’s great insight into how to run an ISP in South Africa from one of our local leaders in the space.

Note – Web Africa is a Bandwidth Blog hosting partner.