Finance minister Pravin Gordhan and the SA Reserve Bank have both given the green light to the R24,4bn all-cash acquisition of SA IT group Dimension Data by Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT). Didata said on Friday that both parties had approved the offer.
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Mamodupi Mohlala has been reinstated as the director-general of the department of communications. Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda and Mohlala reached a settlement on Thursday morning that states Nyanda has agreed to withdraw the letter of termination he handed to Mohlala, meaning she has been reinstated.
Telkom’s chief financial officer, Peter Nelson, is stepping down from Telkom six weeks before has contract was due to expire. But Nelson says there’s “nothing untoward” about his decision to leave early. The JSE-listed telecommunications group used a stock exchange news service announcement on Thursday afternoon to break the news.
Garmin’s planned recall of as many as 1,25m Nuvi personal navigation devices is set to affect SA users, though the extent of the problem locally is not yet entirely clear. The company’s SA distributor, Garmin Distribution Africa, says it is setting up processes to manage the recall here.
Vodacom has lost its exclusivity over Apple’s iPhone in SA: MTN will launch the product in the country within weeks. The cellular network operator will announce late on Thursday afternoon that it will begin selling the iPhone device through its channels. TechCentral has learnt that MTN will issue a press statement later on Thursday confirming what many had already expected: that it has secured a distribution agreement with Apple.
MultiChoice has added three additional Internet service providers as distribution partners for its DStv On Demand Internet streaming service. They are Vox Telecom, Neology and Cybersmart. The company launched its first online on-demand video offering through MWeb just two months after the Internet service provider came to market with an aggressively priced uncapped broadband service.
Within 18 months, SA will experience a broadband and communications boom not witnessed since the Internet growth years of the late 1990s. That’s the view of Vodacom Business managing executive Ermano Quartero, who says that by then 400Mbit/s and higher connections into businesses will be commonplace and 10Mbit/s into the home will become the new standard.
JSE-listed Blue Label Telecoms has partnered with international security software provider Symantec to pilot its mobile phone security suite in SA. Blue Label co-CEO Brett Levy says Symantec approached Blue Label to act as distributor of the product in SA. “It is a good opportunity for us because people can no longer ignore security risks on their phones,” says Levy.
Neotel is playing down the importance of the retail consumer market to its business, saying its main focus into the future will be on the corporate and wholesale markets. This is after the company signed up fewer than 50 000 retail subscribers. CEO Ajay Pandey says Neotel’s ideal revenue mix is 10% from its retail consumer business, 30% from the wholesale business and 60% from the enterprise space. It does not plan to exit the retail market.
Apple’s iPad could go on sale in SA within a matter of weeks. Core Group, Apple’s sole local distributor, has confirmed it is in talks with the US company about bringing the tablet computer to the country.
Core Group executive director Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk says the company has held “lengthy discussions” with Apple and that Core will distribute both versions of the iPad – the cellular-ready product and the Wi-Fi-only configuration – exclusively to the SA market.