Browsing: Duncan McLeod

Telkom is inching closer to a deal to sell 20% of its equity to Korea’s KT Corp. Though the foreign direct investment in SA’s economy should be welcomed, there are potential pitfalls government must be careful to avoid. Last week, Telkom announced to

First National Bank this week lifted the lid on a new payment mechanism that uses the GPS feature in modern smartphones. It won’t result in the much-hyped cashless society, but it could greatly reduce South Africans’ reliance on cash over time. The new payment feature, which is included in an update to

The Australian government is investing A$40bn (R325bn) in taking high-speed fibre-optic broadband infrastructure into more than 90% of that country’s homes. The project has the potential to transform Australia’s economy. Should SA try to emulate it? The land of kangaroos, gum trees, sheep and Shane Warne

Last week’s national policy colloquium, organised by the department of communications, drew a degree of cynicism from the telecoms industry. The view among many industry players is that it’s the same old rhetoric with no action. Will this time be different? The industry can be forgiven for suffering from “colloquium fatigue”. Politicians

On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Nokia’s debt to near junk status. The share price has been in freefall in the past year, with some analysts painting a bleak future for the Finnish company. Yes, it’s bad. But Nokia is already planting the seeds of its turnaround. There’s no doubt that fortunes are made and lost

It’s like 1999 all over again. On Monday, Facebook announced it was buying photo-sharing company Instagram for US$1bn, netting the start-up’s cofounder, Kevin Systrom, a cool $400m. It’s paying over the odds, but the deal makes sense for Facebook ahead of its flotation on the stock market. At first glance and based on the

Telkom has embarked on a multibillion-rand refresh of its access network into homes and businesses. Investors will probably decry the cost of taking fibre-optic infrastructure closer to and even into homes, but group CEO Nombulelo Moholi is at least leading the fixed-line operator in the right direction

On Monday, Alan Knott-Craig will move into his new office at 150 Rivonia Road. Expectations among industry players and consumers alike about his looming tenure at the helm of Cell C are running high. Can the man who built Vodacom turn the smaller operator

John Holdsworth, the businessman who took on the mobile operators over high wholesale call charges and won, has launched a new business that will take advantage of falling prices and faster mobile data networks. He hopes, in the process, to shake up the mobile

If you believe the claptrap coming out of the Apple camp in the past week, then you’ll accept as gospel that the era of the personal computer is over. Nothing could be further from the truth. The PC is alive and well; it’s just being reinvented. Listening to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s keynote speech at the launch of the iPad 3 (sorry, the “new iPad”) last week