Netbox, alone among the top 10 internet service providers in the Czech Republic, has convoluted links to a man accused of major crime. Netbox is a user-friendly and client-driven internet service provider (ISP), holding an estimated 3 percent of the market and serving municipalities and schools. But one of its three shareholders was involved in one of the biggest Czech bank frauds in the last 10 years, the case of Metropolitni Sporitelni Druzstvo.
The Czech Republic has one of the more vibrant Wi-Fi communities in the world, thanks to the short-sighted behavior of SPT Czech Telecom (CT), back in the days when it controlled the market. When CT jacked up prices by 60 percent in the late 1990s, Czech do-it-yourselfers took matters into their own hands. At the time, CT was the country’s sole provider of Internet via phone lines (ADSL) service and charged around a half of an average month’s salary for not-terribly-dazzling 256 kbps data transfer speed. While few could afford those rates, demand for internet was strong and growing stronger, […]
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