DStv operator MultiChoice is facing fresh allegations of anticompetitive behaviour, this time in Kenya, after rivals Wananchi Group and StarTimes accused the broadcaster of anticompetitive abuses in locking up key football rights. Wananchi Group, which owns Zuku TV, has written to
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TopTV has had not an auspicious start to life. Although it was the only one of five new pay-TV operators licensed five years ago by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa to take on MultiChoice and DStv to actually launch, it was always going to be uphill. The troubled telecaster “celebrated” the end
China’s digital pay-television company StarTimes walked away the winner on Tuesday in the TopTV takeover saga, although at least one of the losing consortiums is considering challenging the legality of the deal. Government will be the biggest loser with losses over R1bn. The meeting
Just a day after it was revealed that a consortium led by MSG Afrika, backed with funding from MultiChoice, was making a bid to buy troubled pay-television operator TopTV, it has emerged that a second company, Wananchi Group, has submitted an expression of interest of its own
Africa’s road to high-speed broadband is being achieved in leaps and bounds. Every week brings news of another piece of the jigsaw fitting into place. This week it’s the completion of the national fibre backbone in one of Africa’s larger markets. However, there’s still
Triple-play services, consisting of television, telephony and broadband Internet access, delivered over the same physical cable infrastructure, are not something one typically associates with African telecommunications. Now, however, a Kenyan company, Wananchi, is planning to bring fibre connectivity to hundreds of thousands of homes in East Africa, in the process remaking how a continent thinks about what can be done with high-speed connectivity.
Episode 4 of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral, is live. In this week’s show, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones talk about the dramatic axing of communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala. We interviewed her this week about how the drama unfolded at the department. We also review the other big stories of the week, including Wananchi’s plans to deploy fibre to the home in Kenya, the “I’m been unfairly maligned” speech by Telkom’s nonexecutive chairman, Jeff Molobela, the impending collapse of pay-TV operator Super 5 Media, the launch of DStv Mobile’s streaming video service, and much more.
Kenya and Tanzania are to get high-speed fibre-to-the-home connections offering a triple-play bundle of broadband, telephony and cable television thanks to a US$200m investment from the private sector. The company behind the project, Wananchi — which is backed by Cisco Capital and East Africa Capital Partners — says it would love to do the same in SA, but the regulatory environment here precludes it from doing so.