The release last week of Research ICT Africa’s report on mobile phone pricing in Africa has provoked a little controversy. The facts are quite damning. SA has some of the highest mobile costs on the continent. This is odd given the country’s comparative wealth and infrastructural advantages. By rights, SA ought to have the cheapest phone
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On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Nokia’s debt to near junk status. The share price has been in freefall in the past year, with some analysts painting a bleak future for the Finnish company. Yes, it’s bad. But Nokia is already planting the seeds of its turnaround. There’s no doubt that fortunes are made and lost
With the abundance of cables landing on SA’s shores, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s one the most connected countries in the world. In a sense, it soon will be: there’s no shortage of international capacity on the way. What’s lacking is widespread local access to take advantage of it. The problem isn’t without solutions, but
It’s like 1999 all over again. On Monday, Facebook announced it was buying photo-sharing company Instagram for US$1bn, netting the start-up’s cofounder, Kevin Systrom, a cool $400m. It’s paying over the odds, but the deal makes sense for Facebook ahead of its flotation on the stock market. At first glance and based on the
Telkom has embarked on a multibillion-rand refresh of its access network into homes and businesses. Investors will probably decry the cost of taking fibre-optic infrastructure closer to and even into homes, but group CEO Nombulelo Moholi is at least leading the fixed-line operator in the right direction
Anecdotal evidence suggests there’s been huge growth in the SA technology start-up space in the past year, most of it coming from the Western Cape. It appears the stars are aligning for local tech entrepreneurs: bandwidth is getting cheaper, investor numbers are growing and SA is being seen as an important entry point into Africa
Remember five or six years ago when everyone thought they could start their own social network? Then Facebook arrived and effectively crushed everyone else in the market. There was no point anymore — it owned the market. But while the bean
On Monday, Alan Knott-Craig will move into his new office at 150 Rivonia Road. Expectations among industry players and consumers alike about his looming tenure at the helm of Cell C are running high. Can the man who built Vodacom turn the smaller operator
John Holdsworth, the businessman who took on the mobile operators over high wholesale call charges and won, has launched a new business that will take advantage of falling prices and faster mobile data networks. He hopes, in the process, to shake up the mobile
So, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has decided to reject TopTV parent company On Demand Media’s request for permission to air three “adult” channels on its satellite pay-TV platform. In doing so, the regulator hasn’t only overstepped the mark in terms of the degree to which it should be able to interfere