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
MTN SA is considering selling as much as half of its base station infrastructure in SA to improve the efficiency of its capital structure, says MD Karel Pienaar. “We have been looking at this for a long time,” according to Pienaar, who says the company is weighing the economic pros and cons of selling the towers
The Competition Tribunal has found Telkom guilty of abusing its dominance in the telecommunications market between 1999 and 2004. The company stood accused of abusing its dominance by charging excessive prices, refusing access to an essential facility and engaging in price discrimination thereby making its downstream
Communications minister Dina Pule is in the spotlight after a dossier of allegations against her was leaked to the Mail & Guardian this week. The dossier, substantial elements of which were independently confirmed to the M&G by communication department officials familiar with the circumstances, paints a picture
The recently published Electronic Communications Amendment Bill proposes the creation of a new Spectrum Management Agency responsible for all spectrum allocation in SA. Assignment of frequencies will be divided between the new agency and the sector regulator, the Independent Communications of Authority of SA
