In the end, as we know, Nashua Mobile blinked first. The announcement 18 months ago that it would sell the subscriber bases of its mobile service provider business caught much of the market unawares. But those close to the mobile sector weren’t
Author: Hilton Tarrant
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Apple’s announcement of its assault on your living room was the matter-of-fact way it revealed it. Apple didn’t need to build a TV after all (although it surely tried, given the rumour-mill in recent years). Rather, Apple announced a fundamental
It’s fair to say that MTN’s purchase of Internet service provider Afrihost in late 2014 caught most of the industry by surprise. Not because MTN paid more than R400m for half of the business (which no one knew at the time), but because this meant MTN suddenly owned a consumer ISP
Ten billion rand. That’s MTN South Africa’s capital expenditure this year. It’s a massive number. For the first year in memory (possibly ever), MTN will outspend Vodacom on capex. In the 2015 financial year, Vodacom spent R8,6bn. Now, Vodacom’s
For all the attention garnered by Uber, with given cars being impounded, drivers being attacked and politicians being confused at how to regulate, there’s another disruptor rapidly – but quietly – being embraced in South Africa: Airbnb. And here there aren’t
In its annual report for the year to end March 2015, Vodacom tries to be frank about the re-relaunch in South Africa of M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer service that has fast become the de facto banking system in East Africa. This success in Kenya (and
Annual reports are far more useful than establishing what a chief executive earned a year ago. Nevertheless, that’s about all the attention these documents get these days from journalists (mostly from wire services, given the steep cuts to most newsrooms)
It was 74 minutes of absolute chaos. Between 5.31pm and 6.45pm on Saturday night, Eskom lurched from stage one load shedding to stage two to stage three and then back to stage two. Stages are an abstraction, and it’s worth quantifying what that
I’ve been wearing the Apple Watch for a month. Not because I’m forced to — even though it relates directly to my new career at immedia – but because I’ve actually wanted one since Tim Cook’s “one
In May, Vodacom announced that it had 9,3m smartphones on its network in South Africa (as at end March, the end of its financial year). That is massive, especially considering that a year ago, the number was 7,3m. Total smart devices on its network