Neotel trips up Telkom
In what could be a landmark decision for SA’s telecommunications sector, and for consumers, the Independent Communications Authority of SA’s (Icasa’s) complaints and compliance committee on Friday appeared to open the door for Neotel to gain access to Telkom’s “last-mile” copper network. A written decision
Telkom, Neotel slug it out over LLU
Telkom and Neotel resumed their fight over local-loop unbundling (LLU) on Wednesday, with the smaller operator arguing to the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) that it is entitled to gain access to its bigger rival’s last-mile network into
What it takes to build a subsea cable
The West African Cable System (Wacs), the highest-capacity undersea telecommunications cable to land in SA to date, will eventually offer countries along its route, including SA, up to 5,1Tbit/s of capacity into Europe. With 14 entities involved in
$650m Wacs lights up Africa’s west coast
The West African Cable System (Wacs), the latest submarine cable to land on African shores, has arrived, offering SA operators 500Gbit/s of capacity at launch. The system, which has a design capacity of 5,1Tbit/s, makes use of both 10Gbit/s and 40Gbit/s technology on different segments and will
Knott-Craig makes his first move at Cell C
Alan Knott-Craig has played his first card since being appointed as CEO of Cell C on 1 April. The operator has released a new least-cost routing (LCR) product, called LCRAnyNet, that Knott-Craig says will “reduce the cost of telecommunications for business and will bring down the barrier for small
Icasa in preemptive strike over spectrum fees
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) is seeking court protection in the wake of news that an unnamed telecommunications operator wants to pay the revised radio frequency spectrum fees that were meant to come into effect on 1 April 2011 but which were instead deferred until this year. Until April 2012, Icasa was
SA’s giant new sub-sea cable is here
The 14 000km West African Cable System (Wacs), the first new sub-sea telecommunications cable along Africa’s west coast since Sat-3 was launched 11 years ago, will be launched officially in about a month’s time. Angus Hay, co-chair of the Wacs management committee and chief technology officer at Neotel, says
Neotel grows consumer base, but still lags
Neotel has doubled the number of retail subscribers on its network in the past 11 months, growing this customer segment from 50 000 to 100 000, according to CEO Sunil Joshi. However, the company, licensed in the mid-2000s as the first competitor to incumbent Telkom, is still struggling to make much on an impact in the consumer market, with less
Africa coming into focus for Neotel parent
India’s Tata Communications, which owns a controlling interest in local telecommunications operator Neotel, says SA is crucial to the company’s strategy of expanding into Southern Africa and into the continent more broadly. To do this, Tata Communications CEO Vinod Kumar says the company needs to deepen existing partnerships in the region and forge new ones. He won’t be drawn into acquisition
Rural broadband: why it’s so hard to do
The lack of fibre-optic transmission networks outside SA’s main urban centres could prove a huge stumbling block to rolling out next-generation long-term evolution (LTE) networks in rural areas and add significant costs for operators wanting to meet roll-out obligations for these networks. Richard Morse, group technology executive
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