Duncan McLeod is founder and managing editor of TechCentral. With more than 30 years of experience in technology journalism, he has worked for and contributed to a range of publications, including the Financial Mail, the Sunday Times and the Financial Times.
JSE- and Nasdaq-listed Net1 UEPS Technologies, which earlier this year won a contested multibillion-rand project to roll out a system for the payment of social grants in South Africa, is now facing investigations by US authorities into whether it made corrupt payments to government officials to secure the contract
Struggling telecommunications operator Telkom has suffered another blow after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its credit rating on Tuesday, warning that the continued decline in its fixed-line business and losses in mobile will result in further profit erosion. S&P cut Telkom’s credit
South Africans can finally download music from Apple’s iTunes Store, the US firm said in a statement on Tuesday. The news comes just a day after the company announced that the iPhone 5 would be launched in South Africa on 14 December. “Apple today announced the launch of the iTunes Store in Russia
Technology entrepreneur Stafford Masie spent two-and-a-half years working on the Payment Pebble smartphone payment device before it was unveiled last week by retail banking giant Absa. The device was engineered and built by Masie’s Centurion-based company Thumbzup, which he wants
Datatec was trading off by more than 2% in midmorning trading on the JSE on Monday after it warned that its biggest subsidiary, technology distributor Westcon, experienced a weak third financial quarter. “Westcon’s performance in the third quarter has been
Independent cellphone tower operator IHS, which is headquartered in Nigeria, has secured a US$202m syndicated credit facility from Ecobank Capital and other banks. The money will be used to help facilitate IHS’s acquisition of MTN Group’s 1 757 base stations in Cameroon and
Reductions in the fees that mobile operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks have not hurt them financially, as they claimed they would. Nor have they led to higher retail prices, lower investments or retrenchments in the sector. These are some of the
After more than a year of testing, MTN South Africa will on Saturday launch its fourth-generation long-term evolution (4G/LTE) network on a commercial basis in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. MTN confirmed on Friday that the network would go live on 1 December
JSE-listed computer assembler and technology distributor Mustek has sold its 41,8% stake in distributor Comztek to another JSE-listed IT company, Datatec, for R39,4m in cash and shares. Comztek’s only other major shareholder, its MD Paul Conradie – who also holds 41,8% of the equity
Nashua Communications MD Andy Openshaw has joined Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig in calling for a further substantial further reduction in wholesale mobile termination rates in 2013, when a three-year process of reducing the rates comes to an end
