Author: Duncan McLeod

There’s an online land grab of the sort not seen since the dot-com bubble taking place in the global instant messaging (IM) market. WhatsApp Messenger, WeChat (partly owned by South Africa’s Naspers), Hangouts, Skype and BlackBerry Messenger, along with several smaller

Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko has said that he hopes the company will be offering conmsumers a triple-play combination of uncapped Internet access, voice services and video on demand (VOD) for one flat-rate fee within the next 12 months. The JSE-listed telecommunications operator, which is

Telkom has reduced the price of its wholesale IP Connect product, the one Internet service providers use to access its broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) network, by 15%. IP Connect fees have a direct impact on DSL prices in South Africa, which ISPs usually quick to pass

The East African Submarine System (Eassy), a subsea telecommunications cable along Africa’s eastern shoreline, is set to get a speed boost with supplier Alcatel-Lucent set to deploy the latest 100Gbit/s wavelength technology on the network. The upgrade will allow Eassy ultimately to carry

Telkom on Wednesday denied speculation in the media that it has received a proposal from a Southeast Asian company or grouping for the sale of its mobile towers business in a deal that reportedly could be valued at as much as US$3bn. On Tuesday, a report on the

The number of video-on-demand subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa will grow by one million in 2014, despite the lack of broadband infrastructure in the region, according to a new report. However, most of those subscribers will receive VOD-based services not over broadband

Despite the growing popularity of smartphone-based instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp and WeChat, the traditional text message, based on SMS, is far from dead, a new research report claims. In fact, mobile operators are expected to enjoy increasing revenues

Telkom’s share price climbed marginally on the JSE on Tuesday after a report overnight suggested it may be in discussions with an investment group from Southeast Asia that may be prepared to invest up to US$3bn into the operator’s struggling mobile division. According to a

In recent weeks, I’ve been fortunate to meet a range of really smart South African entrepreneurs who are doing incredibly exciting stuff in the technology space, often with relatively few resources. Despite all the doom and gloom that is our politics, and despite the poor state of

Emerge Mobile, an ambitious start-up based in Umhlanga, north of Durban, has developed a smartphone-based mobile payments system similar to the US solution Square, and has secured certifications from international bodies. It now plans to launch