Author: Duncan McLeod

Spare a thought for Edward Snowden. At the time of writing, the former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (NSA) technical contractor, was holed up in a transit lounge in a Moscow airport trying to figure out where in the world he could travel next to avoid arrest and prosecution by US authorities under the Espionage Act

In this episode of TalkCentral, your regular hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson dive into the big technology stories of the past week. Among other things, they chat about Telkom’s tariff hikes and the news TechCentral broke on Friday about the liquidation of John Holdsworth’s AppChat. Also this week

Telkom is increasing fixed-line telephony charges and hiking the cost of line rental, despite the continued fall in the number of lines in service as consumers switch to mobile alternatives. The telecommunications operator is, however, leaving broadband subscription fees unchanged. Telkom claims the

After 38 years as a publicly traded company, Altech will terminate its listing on the JSE on 20 August, provided it gets the support of shareholders for the move, the technology group, which is controlled by Altron, said on Thursday. Last month, Altron announced that it intended to buy out minority

Shares in MTN powered higher on Thursday afternoon after it lost to Norway’s Telenor and Qatar Telecom in the race to win one of two potentially highly lucrative licences on offer to build mobile telecommunications networks in Myanmar. In late afternoon trading, MTN

Nine months after Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub hinted that the mobile operator was keen to build fibre-to-the-home broadband networks in South Africa, more details have emerged of its plans in this regard. Executive head of access solutions at Vodacom, Janine Rebelo

Naspers’s decision, 12 years ago, to buy a stake in Chinese instant-messaging, entertainment and online advertising company Tencent continues to pay big dividends for the South African-headquartered media and technology group. Financial results published on Tuesday

For years, Telkom has been like a frog in slowly warming water. It’s kept broadband prices far too high while watching on puzzled as its subscribers abandoned it in favour of mobile alternatives. It has a high cost structure – mainly because it has too many employees – but consumers don’t care about its challenges. And

Telkom has accused the former MD of its international business unit, Thami Msimango, and well-known businessman Mthunzi Mdwaba of violating South Africa’s anticorruption laws over an agreement involving former subsidiary Multi-Links and JSE-listed Blue Label Telecoms. The allegations

Mark Shuttleworth certainly isn’t afraid of taking the proverbial bull by the horns. After selling his South African Internet security business Thawte for US$575m at the height of the dot-com bubble, spending $20m and a year in training to become the first South African in space, and launching an operating system