Next month, the gigantic West African Cable System (Wacs) will come online, bringing around 400Gbit/s of submarine fibre capacity to SA at launch. But what does this increase in capacity mean for SA consumers and Internet service providers? Sean Nourse, executive for connectivity at Internet Solutions, says that although the effects of Wacs
Boyish rom-com lead Hugh Grant is about as far from a 19th century pirate as you could imagine, but then The Pirate Captain he voices in Aardman’s Pirates! Band of Misfits is not your average scorbutic seadog. Preening, caddish and exceedingly proud of his “luxuriant” beard, The Pirate Captain is every bit the roguish man-child that
JSE-listed technology group Altech expects headline earnings per share for the year ended February 2012 to be as much as 30% lower against a year ago as problems at its operations outside SA continue to weigh on the group’s financial performance. Altech says headline earnings per share will decline by between 24% and 30% as a result
MTN’s Turkish rival, Turkcell, which is suing the Johannesburg-based cellphone giant for US$4,2bn, is embroiled in a bitter internal battle as shareholders square up for control of the company. Turkcell, listed in New York and Istanbul, has a market capitalisation of $11bn. In court papers filed in the US recently, Turkcell accused
Most companies preparing for a huge stockmarket flotation would try to keep a low profile. Not Facebook. On 9 April, the giant social network stunned the business world by announcing it was buying Instagram, a photo-sharing social network, for US$1bn in cash and stock. This surprising combination, swiftly dubbed “Facestagram”, has
The battle for the soul of the SABC ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in Mangaung has plunged the public broadcaster into yet another crisis over control of its editorial content. After SABC news chief Phil Molefe was this week placed on special leave after refusing to give CEO Lulama Mokhobo a copy of the daily news diary so she could monitor the
Gauteng’s e-toll registration outlets were empty on Thursday with virtually no one registering for e-tags, despite the looming 30 April deadline, when the tolls go live. The bright orange e-toll registration outlets, operated by the SA National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral), are in shopping malls and alongside highways across Gauteng for
Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia on Thursday released its Asha range of handsets in the SA market at fairly aggressive price points. The feature phones — which arguably could be described as entry-level smartphones — could help Nokia regain some of the market share it has lost to entry-level Android
SA will switch on digital terrestrial television services “around” September, starting a period of “dual illumination” of both analogue and digital signals, communications minister Dina Pule said in a statement on Thursday. Pule said Sentech, the state-owned company charged with deploying the broadcasting
MTN has again gone on the attack, accusing rival Turkcell of making “ludicrous” allegations that the SA-based operator influenced SA foreign policy on Iran in order to win an operating licence in the Middle Eastern country. In a statement, MTN Group CEO Sifiso Dabengwa says MTN “did not cause
