Ronnie Apteker (entrepreneur)

HISTORY
Mr Ronen "Ronnie" APTEKER founder of Internet Solutions (IS), South Africa's First Internet Service Provider is a very well respected business man and entrepeneur in South Africa. Running the most successful internet services provider in the history of Southern Africa , Ronnie Apteker was awarded South Africa's Top business man in 2005. He writes for the Business Times once a month about the philosophy of business.; sits on various boards and committees within South Africa and is involved in many charity organizations and fundraising initiatives.

Born in Cape Town on 19th August 1967, Ronnie Cum Lauded his Master of Science degree at the University of Witwatersrand in 1994. Internet Solutions having been founded in 1993 was at the end of South Africa's apartheid regieme and the beginning of the DOTCOM boom in Silicon Valley. With this timing came some brilliant work from Ronnie and his Internet Solutions team;

INTERNET SOLUTIONS HISTORY
Internet Solutions founded - 1994
IS installs the first fibre optic link (64kbps) from South Africa to Sprint in the USA via SAT-2 - 1995
IS forms Trusted Network Solutions, South Africa's first network security business - 1996
Dimension Data acquires 25% of IS. IS launches the Ananzi search engine. IS commercial (e-Commerce) and ICON. Staff complement exceeds 100 - 1997
IS rolls out its first international PoP in New York and launches South Africa's first Internet-based VPN service. Dimension Data acquires the remaining 75% of IS - 1998
1000th Corporate customer connected. IS launches South Africa's first multi-layered Hosting service - 1999
IS Installs first 45 Mbps T3 international link to the USA VRAS and VISP divisions commence operations - 2000
IS Merges with OmniLink, creating South Africa's leading Network Service company. IS reaches a capacity of over 100 Mbps of International bandwidth. South Africa's first MPLS VPN launched.

PUBLISHED FILMS
Crazy Monkey: Straight outta Benoni - Director
Victor Chicken - Executive Director

BOOKS WRITTEN
Do You Love It In the Morning? - Co-Author with Jeremy Ord

INTERNET SITE INITIATIVES & ONLINE PROJECTS
Online Shopping WantItAll is one of South Africa’s largest online shopping stores, specializing in a product range similar to Amazon.com. Founders, Justin Drennan, Ryan Drennan and Terence Murphy started WantItAll in 2006 with one goal in mind – making online shopping accessible in South Africa, while being supported by Google. This is exactly what happened, and now thousands of online users are reaping the benefit of great innovation. WantItAll, in co-operation with Amazon, currently, brings over 14 million products to the South African market, delivering each and every product to the customer’s door, without the use of the South African Postal Service (SAPO). This was strengthened by Amazon’s choice not to ship to South Africa, making WanItAll a soul provider of this nature in South Africa.