Author: Duncan McLeod

How is this for ambitious? Vodacom in South Africa is hoping to sign up 10m subscribers to its M-Pesa mobile banking and payments platform within the next five years. To put that in context, the cellular operator managed to

Telkom’s suspended chief financial officer, Jacques Schindehütte, has retired from the group’s board. The telecommunications operator has agreed to pay him his full retirement benefits and to discontinue disciplinary proceedings against him. Telkom made the surprise announcement 30 minutes before markets closed on Friday

JSE-listed technology company Pinnacle Holdings has warned that its headline earnings per share for the year to end-June are likely to have fallen by as much as 22% compared to the previous year. Earnings per share are likely to have declined by between 13% and 20%, the company said in a statement to its shadeholders

MTN is “cautiously optimistic” that it has turned the corner in its South African operation after reporting 400 000 net subscriber additions in July. That’s the word from group chief financial officer Brett Goschen, who made the

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