Author: Craig Wilson

Gauteng’s department of finance has canned the controversy-ridden Gauteng Online project meant to provide connectivity and computing to the province’s schools. Instead, it has issued a new tender for what it calls “e-learning solutions”, in terms of which suppliers will provide 80 000 tablets to 1 600 schools in the province

Japanese electronics company Sony didn’t quite lose (but certainly misplaced) the plot for a number of years when it came to consumer electronics. Thankfully, if its new handsets, tablets, and portable speakers are anything to go by, it appears to have found it again. The Sony SRS-BTM8 wireless

Kenyan power utility Kenya Power will distribute 3,3m energy-efficient light bulbs to its customers at a cost of KSh1,3bn (US$15,2m). The project is expected to reduce power consumption by the utility’s domestic customers by 130MW during peak hours and is expected to serve as a revenue source for Kenya

The “functional separation” of Telkom’s wholesale and retail divisions, agreed to in a wide-ranging antitrust settlement announced last week, could be a precursor to the structural separation of the two divisions, analysts say. Last week, as part of a R200m settlement reached

First it was self-driving cars, then Google Glass, and now with Project Loon, Google is turning its attention to … balloons. The company has begun a pilot project in New Zealand using high-pressure balloons in the stratosphere to provide Internet connectivity “at 3G speeds” and, if it goes well, Google wants to encircle

Telkom has agreed to pay a R200m penalty, to functionally separate its retail and wholesale divisions, to adhere to pricing commitments for the next five years, and to allow its future conduct to be monitored. This all forms part of a settlement with the Competition Commission over anticompetitive abuses

Eaton Towers has inked a deal with Telkom Kenya to manage the operator’s 1 000 base stations. Under the 15-year management and leasing deal, Eaton will maintain Telkom Kenya’s existing sites and build new ones. The deal extends Eaton’s partnership with France’s Orange, which controls

Unbundling the local loop would lead to a damaging outcome for Telkom and would cause job losses without radically improving connectivity for most South Africans. That’s the view of Roy Kruger, technical adviser to communications minister Dina Pule, who argues that opening Telkom’s last-mile copper network

South Africa should be aiming higher than it is with its plans for providing universal broadband access by 2020 and may need to consider new business models. Furthermore, allowing Telkom’s rivals access to its copper network may not solve the nation’s connectivity woes. These are the views of Catherine