Based on an analysis of recent customer reviews across South African internet and telecoms providers, the sector reveals a fundamental disconnect: the people who work in telecoms are frequently excellent, but the systems they work within are frequently not. Individual agents earn extraordinary praise for resolving complex issues, but that praise almost always follows weeks of systemic failure that should never have occurred. The sector's defining pattern is not bad service; it is good people trapped in bad systems. Easy to join, nearly impossible to leave, and unreachable in between.