Stephen Mncube is the new chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) and will serve a five-year term that will end in mid-2015. Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda made the announcement at a dinner in Sandton on Wednesday evening to mark the end
The elements of the future of the desktop are slowly falling into place. No one company has a comprehensive set of products and services that will deliver the future of computing, but the shape of things to come is getting clearer. The key driver behind it all is convergence — convergence onto a single productivity device, and convergence in the “cloud”. In hardware, desktops are losing market share to notebooks, which in turn are being
Wireless Business Solutions (WBS), the holding company of iBurst, is at advanced stage of discussions about building a mobile cellular network in a sign that infrastructure competition in SA is stepping up another gear, TechCentral has learnt. If it goes ahead with its plans, which one senior source close to the company says appears likely, WBS will become SA’s fifth mobile network operator after Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and the soon-to-be-launched Telkom
Telkom has sent its customers a newsletter with their bills this month in which it tries to rubbish the uncapped broadband offerings introduced by MWeb and other service providers. Instead, it shows how Telkom is still stuck in the past. The newsletter article — headlined “Broadband: put a cap on it!” — doesn’t once
The cost of communicating on all three of SA’s mobile operators has risen, not fallen, despite the substantial reduction in wholesale mobile termination rates on 1 March, two industry executives have claimed. Howard Sackstein, CEO of telecommunications company Saicom, who has analysed a large range packages – both postpaid and prepaid – offered by
Telkom wants fixed-line wholesale call termination rates to rise, not go down as has been proposed by its regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). The fixed-line operator has told Icasa at public hearings on termination rates in Midrand that the rates it charges other operators to carry calls onto its network should go [...]
Pay-TV competition? What pay-TV competition? Naspers-owned MultiChoice grew its SA subscriber base by 450 000 to 2,8m homes in the 2010 financial year. And it added 1,1m new subscribers in other African markets. SA consumers, it would appear, weren’t tempted to put off their purchasing decisions until after the May launch of On Digital Media’s TopTV, the first direct competitor to MultiChoice
For some reason there seems to be a “Symbian is dead” meme floating around at the moment. Discussions with some of the infected victims suggest that it’s related to a misunderstanding of Nokia’s Symbian roadmap and the respective roles of Symbian and Maemo in Nokia’s strategy. Firstly, Nokia isn’t dumping Symbian. Despite all its weaknesses Symbian had over 40% smartphone market share in the first quarter of 2010. It’s the dominant platform with more than twice
Simon Dingle and Ben Kelly more than compensate for their absent fellow panellists this week as they discuss Apple’s iOS4, the iPhone 4, Android fragmentation, government’s definition of broadband, Vodacom’s LTE demonstration, Telkom’s financial results, and much more
Vodacom has no plans to offer third-generation (3G) cellphone services in the 900MHz band, especially not in urban areas, because there is insufficient spectrum available. The operator confirmed earlier this month that it is testing 3G on half a dozen rural base stations. But it says it will be impossible to offer these services in [...]
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