The fight for what SA consumers’ television future will look like is hotting up. The broadcasting regulator’s new draft regulations for digital terrestrial television, the migration to which is already years behind schedule, came under fire this week at public hearings and could result in further delays. Nigeria, Namibia
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) wants to reassign large chunks of radio frequency spectrum for mobile and fixed-wireless telephony and broadband, a reading of its newly published draft national frequency migration plan shows. The draft plan proposes not only making
Black-owned investment company Kagiso Media would like to launch both subscription and free-to-air television services but will only do so if the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) crafts digital terrestrial broadcasting regulations to create
With more than 16m tracks, 2m albums and 650 000 artists, Simfy is a fully fledged music streaming service that stacks up incredibly well against rivals Spotify, Rhapsody and Rdio. From next week it’s available in SA – without the need for a foreign credit card, a virtual private network, or any of the other digital
The department of science & technology has had a tax incentive programme in place since 2007. It’s meant to encourage research and development (R&D), but few companies are aware of it and are losing billions of rand in tax rebates in the process. Dov Paluch, MD of Catalyst Solutions, a company
Nokia and BlackBerry handsets continue to dominate the SA market but worldwide the picture is very different. A new report from Gartner shows Samsung Electronics is pulling further and further ahead of Nokia and Apple in terms of unit sales. Moreover, Google’s Android operating system
The National Planning Commission’s revised National Development Plan, handed over to President Jacob Zuma by planning minister Trevor Manuel on Wednesday, has raised the idea of separating Telkom structurally into two businesses, one focused on
Mauritius-based DotConnectAfrica is laying claim to the .africa generic top-level domain (gTLD) for which SA’s ZA Central Registry is the African Union’s endorsed bidder. This is in spite of the fact that DotConnectAfrica inadvertently applied for the wrong domain, at a cost of US$185 000, and is unlikely to succeed in
Last week Republicans seized on news that David Plouffe, a senior advisor in the White House, had accepted $100 000 from a subsidiary of MTN for two speeches he gave in Nigeria shortly before joining the White House staff in 2010. “Today’s story raises serious questions about [US President] Barack Obama’s senior
Telkom’s R449m fine handed down this week for anticompetitive practices could be only the start of its problems. Senior competition lawyers are expecting a string of damages claims from its competitors. The Competition Tribunal found Telkom guilty of anticompetitive practices, which opens
