A benchmark for real broadband
Telkom would have us believe that the only thing holding South Africa back from cost-effective Internet is a technical challenge. In fact, it’s greed, compounded by a lack of will and imagination. For the most part, the really big players in telecommunications don’t want to fix the problem. Why should they when they can charge
Q3 launch for Neotel 4G network
Neotel will launch a fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications network using long-term evolution (LTE) technology in Gauteng in the third quarter of the year, the company said at a press conference on Wednesday. However, the network will be limited in scope, with only 50 base stations at launch, CEO Sunil Joshi
Local-loop unbundling in limbo
Whatever happened to cracking open Telkom’s last mile of copper cables into homes and businesses to rival broadband operators? The industry regulator has gone silent on the issue, leaving industry players wondering whether local-loop unbundling has quietly been shelved
Icasa owed R372m by licensees
iBurst parent Wireless Business Solutions (WBS) is by no means the biggest offender when it comes to unpaid spectrum licence fees, information in TechCentral’s possession shows. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is owed a total of R372m in unpaid spectrum fees from a variety
Neotel makes landlines mobile
Neotel has launched a new product called NeoSmart that allows its fixed-wireless customers to make and receive calls using Neotel’s existing products from a dual-Sim mobile phone. This means customers can take
ISPs take 8ta to task
The Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) has taken Telkom’s mobile arm, 8ta, to task for what it calls “false and misleading” advertising. 8ta, in turn, has said the campaign in question has run its course and won’t be flighted again. Ispa lodged the complaint against
NLD fibre route finally live
After significant delays, in part caused by the complexity of managing a project involving three direct competitors, the National Long Distance (NLD) consortium has finally switched on its fibre-optic telecommunications networks between Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The
Pule’s policy panel meets
The information and communications technology (ICT) policy review panel appointed in November by communications minister Dina Pule met last Thursday and Friday in Pretoria to map out its work, divide up responsibilities and to design an approach to tackling the review process. The panel
The case for an SMS interconnect
This year will be a pivotal one for the South African SMS industry as the issue of interconnection fees is resolved, and mobile networks charge each other for terminating application-to-person (A2P) SMS messages doing away with the vagaries of the gentlemen’s agreement between the operators that maintain
8ta debuts uncapped voice calls
Telkom’s mobile arm, 8ta, has introduced unlimited voice calls for a fixed monthly price starting at R1 199/month in an effort to tap the top-end of the contract market where users spend thousands of rand a month on their telecommunications needs
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