Author: Duncan McLeod

MTN’s group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa and group chief financial officer Brett Goschen sat down with journalists following publication of the mobile operator’s interim 2014 financial results for the six months to end-June. In this edited extract from the press conference, listen as Dabengwa and Goschen

Government delays in issuing a final policy on high-demand radio frequency spectrum, needed for mobile operators to deploy broadband infastructure, has started affecting the quality of MTN’s network in some

Telecommunications group MTN has lifted its interim dividend by 20,3% to 445c/share after reporting a strong earnings and revenue performance outside its home market of South Africa. Profit margins – measured before interest, tax, depreciation and

MTN’s South African operation has again borne the brunt of the price war in the mobile industry, with its revenue in the six months to June slumping by 7% and its profit margin, measured before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, sliding by 1,5 percentage points. The poor numbers were exacerbated by steep cuts earlier this

Overall, Vodacom and Telkom Mobile have South Africa’s best post-paid mobile plans, new data from telecommunications research firm Tarifica claims to show. Virgin Mobile scored bottom of the list, coming in in fifth place overall behind Cell C and MTN, but MTN failed to emerge as the winner in even a single category. The Tarifica scores

Telkom, for many years shunned by both institutional and retail investors, appears to have shed its poor image in the investment community, with the market rushing to snap up its shares on the expectation of a significant turnaround in its fortunes. The share price was trading up by more than 6% in lunchtime trading on the JSE on Tuesday

Business Connexion (BCX) shareholders will next week vote on whether to accept Telkom’s R2,7bn all-cash offer to buy them out. But the deal looks set to pass, with Telkom saying on Tuesday that 80% of shareholders have given their written undertaking to support the proposed deal. The meeting, which will take place on Monday

South Africa’s telecommunications industry has “made too much money for too long” and, as competition intensifies and as government and regulatory scrutiny grows, operators are having to become more cost effective and

Newly licensed pay-television operator Siyaya TV, which hopes to offer consumers a low-cost bouquet using digital terrestrial television transmission, has reportedly secured a R1bn broadcast deal for the rights to broadcast Bafana Bafana football games. According to the City Press newspaper, the deal gives Siyaya the rights

Walk into a mobile retailer today and you’ll be greeted by a wall of phones, many of them black, almost all of them drab slabs of plastic with large touch screens. Before Steve Jobs got onto a stage in San Francisco seven years ago and unveiled Apple’s first iPhone, cellphones came in all sorts of nifty shapes. There were candy bars, sliders