Author: Duncan McLeod

Picture essay | Takealot.com, the online retailer controlled by Naspers, has officially launched its flagship customer collections point on the New Road Bridge in Johannesburg.

The news this week that government has again kicked the spectrum licensing can down the road is further evidence that it isn’t taking the needs of the sector seriously enough.

Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams has dashed hopes for the urgent licensing of new broadband spectrum to mobile operators.

Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said on Tuesday evening that her department has paid Icasa the first tranche of its annual budget, a day after the communications regulator said it would take her to court to secure the funds.

The Competition Tribunal has approved the acquisition by Remgro’s Community Investment Ventures Holdings of Vumatel, but has attached long-term conditions to the sale.

Icasa on Monday said it has instructed its attorneys to file papers against communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams and her department in a dispute over its funding.

Vodacom said on Monday that “unquestionably the most significant obstacle to reducing input costs and, by extension, data prices is the fact that no new spectrum has been allocated” to operators for the past 14 years.

The ham-fisted way in which Vodacom implemented Icasa’s data regulations damaged the operator’s reputation and drove consumers to threatening to quit the network, according to new research.

Ah, that old trope, “market failure”. Economic development minister Ebrahim Patel trotted it out several times this week while unveiling the Competition Commission’s provisional findings into the data service market.

The Competition Commission has floated the idea of enforcing functional and/or accounting separation on South Africa’s large mobile operators –…