Browsing: In-depth

Cell C CEO Jose Dos Santos sat down with TechCentral on Tuesday to explain why the company cut its prepaid price, on a promotional basis until the end of September, to 66c/minute. But he played down suggestions that South Africa’s mobile operators are engaged

The “last mile” fixed-line infrastructure into people homes in South Africa is “awful” and is holding back competition in South Africa’s television broadcasting industry by preventing Internet protocol television and video-on-demand players from launching services

Apple could be about to splash as much as US$3,2bn on Beats Electronics, the maker of a range of popular headphones. According to a report in the Financial Times, a deal could be announced as early as next week. But it may be less the headphones than Beats’s new music streaming service that has attracted the interest of Apple

State, a fast-growing international social communications network built around user sentiment and personal opinion, has been launched in South Africa. The London-based State was founded by British-Lebanese entrepreneurs and brothers Alexander and Mark Asseily. They want to change the way we look at social networks by

South Africans have been doing it for generations. Social lending, familiar to many in the form of groups like stokvels, has been a hallmark of how many people make do, outside of formal financial networks. Thanks to the Web however, social lending, also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, has begun to take off in developed countries

One day, everything will be data. Voice will not exist as a separate service needing different technology. The transition in developed countries has been relatively slow. However, at the international level, large amounts of calls now move through Internet protocol and multiprotocol label switching-based networks. Every year, consumer software

If you listened only to social development ­minister ­Bathabile Dlamini and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), you might believe that last week’s ­constitutional court judgment vindicated the agency. Rather, Sassa should be seriously embarrassed, and the judgment should give rise to grave concern about how the agency is

A new South African video-on-demand player, Discover Digital, plans to give broadcasters a run for their money by launching both subscription-based and transactional video-on-demand services, as well as content kiosks, aimed at a broad spectrum of consumers. The company says it has developed the infrastructure required to launch its service

Financially embattled Eskom has run to the government for additional funding to pay its spiralling bills. But the treasury has refused and said it will not fund the utility from its strained coffers, and the energy regulator couldn’t help even if it wanted to. Faced with a shortfall

Altron is keeping mum about the future of subsidiary Altech Autopage Cellular in the wake of news this week that the cellular service provider’s most direct rival, Reunert’s Nashua Mobile, has decided to sell off its customer base and close up shop. All Altron will say when contacted by TechCentral is that the JSE-listed group