Two themes dominated the giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week. One was the incredible advances in television technology; the other was the emergence of thin and lightweight Windows-powered PC laptops called “Ultrabooks”. The Ultrabook category is set to dominate the
It’s become a rite of passage for the world’s biggest technology companies. As soon as you’ve fought your way to the top and become the darling of both stock markets and customers, regulators begin to cry “monopoly”. It happened to IBM in the 1960s
Last Wednesday, photographer and blogger Trey Ratcliff caused an uproar online when he suggested that digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras are doomed because of the advances in so-called “mirrorless” cameras. The leading-edge brigade praised
The giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off in Las Vegas this week, with Korean rivals Samsung and LG unveiling new “smart” television technology that shows clearly how the battle over online media and applications is spreading
Despite giant strides in the right direction in the past few years in opening up SA’s telecommunications market — making it more competitive and transparent — there are still pockets of monopolistic behaviour. One of these is the application-to-person (A2P) SMS market in SA, which is worth more than R1bn/year in revenue for the mobile network
There’s been plenty of talk about the need for greater mobile data coverage in rural areas but it’s easy to become blasé about it when you’re ensconced in a coverage-rich metropolis for 350 days of the year. Hit the road and the plight of those who live with abysmal or nonexistent data coverage becomes clear
It is a perversion of SA’s broadband sector that wireless players punch above their weight. More than 21m South Africans use a wireless connection to access the Internet — with a tablet, smartphone or dongle — whereas fewer than 800 000 subscribe to an ADSL broadband connection. This is according to the Organisation for Economic
It has been a lively year for technology, despite the bad state of the world’s economy. Technology is now so intrinsic to both business and personal life that it might appear recession-proof. But this high-level view masks the Darwinian ferocity of the battles raging between the tech titans. The year 2011 will be remembered as
A reading of a detailed draft plan by the telecommunications regulator to license radio frequency spectrum for next-generation wireless broadband networks shows it wants to entice new entrants, maximise competition and encourage infrastructure sharing. It could change SA’s telecoms
After a series of false starts, humbly acknowledged, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) yesterday came out with a new proposal to allocate the sought-after spectrum in the 2,6GHz band and, rather progressively, spectrum in the 800MHz band, too. Previous
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