Author: Duncan McLeod

In the TalkCentral podcast this week, Vodacom and Rain’s roaming deal, Standard Bank’s MVNO, the Internet Service Providers’ Association’s demands, Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud 2019.

A process called “digital restacking” could take up to two years to complete, delaying the allocation of prime radio frequency spectrum to telecommunications operators to 2022.

Communications minister Nomvula Mokonyane said government has set July 2020 as the firm and final deadline by which time analogue terrestrial television broadcasts must be switched off.

Rain is prepared to discuss roaming arrangements with any operator, and the company’s agreement with Vodacom is non-exclusive, its CEO, Willem Roos, said on Friday.

A month before communications regulator Icasa is due in court to defend itself against legal action over its new data-expiry rules, Telkom has begun to implement the regulations.

Standard Bank has finally confirmed one of the telecommunications industry’s worst-kept secrets: it will launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), becoming the second major bank in South Africa to do so.

Communications regulator Icasa failed in its regulatory duty when it allowed Vodacom and Rain to enter into a national roaming agreement, Cell C told the Competition Commission on Thursday.

Regulators should lend more support to smaller mobile operators to help them break the dominance of Vodacom and MTN, Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko told the Competition Commission on Thursday.

MTN South Africa’s data prices will tumble when it gets access to new radio frequency spectrum, CEO Godfrey Motsa told the Competition Commission in Pretoria on Thursday.

Of the 21 countries in which MTN operates, its South African operation has the least spectrum assigned to it outside countries that face conflict situations.