There will soon be clarity on how hundreds of millions of rand in the Universal Service Fund will be spent. The money is meant to be used to facilitate the roll-out of telecommunications infrastructure in underserviced and rural parts of SA, but has remained largely untapped for years. Now Phineas Moleele, the newly appointed CEO at the Universal Service & Access Agency of SA (Usaasa), the government body established to administer the fund, is promising to start using the money in the fund.
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With MTN’s cellular network acquisitions in emerging markets on hold, analysts say the group can probably be considered a mature business. But there are still opportunities in the business services sector, they say. MTN told shareholders on Thursday that acquisition opportunities in emerging markets are becoming harder to find.
MTN says it will have to start investigating options to improve cash returns meaningfully to shareholders as the emerging market telecommunications sector matures.
That’s the shock assessment of the cellular group’s outgoing president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko. Nhleko will address the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday afternoon, giving shareholders a peek at what they can expect to see at its interim results presentation next month.
The proposed acquisition by Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) of Dimension Data will give the SA-headquartered IT group’s Internet Solutions (IS) division access to one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. IS MD Derek Wilcocks, reacting to the news of the proposed R24,4bn all-cash deal, says it’s “incredibly positive” for IS as it will make the Didata unit part of one of the “strongest global networks, with data centres around the world”.
Japanese telecommunications group, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT), is buying SA IT group Dimension Data for £2,1bn (R24,4bn). The offer represents a R5bn premium to Didata’s value on Wednesday, before the offer was announced. Didata has already received commitments to support the deal from more than half its shareholders, including Didata directors, Venfin and Allan Gray.
Telkom’s chief financial officer, Peter Nelson, appears to have quit his job in part because of frustrations with the way the telecommunications group is being led by its board of directors. Telkom surprised the markets on Tuesday afternoon when it announced that Nelson had tendered his resignation just days after CEO Reuben September left the group.
Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, was in SA last week to meet with the software company’s customers and to attend the soccer World Cup final in Johannesburg. TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod sat down with Courtois, who is responsible for all of Microsoft’s operations outside the US, for an exclusive media interview and asked him about life at the company after the departure of Bill Gates, cloud computing and the plans for its Bing search engine.
Brazil has set aside money and expertise to help SA if it ditches its commitment to the European standard for digital terrestrial television and stumps for the standard used in the South American country instead. Andre Barbosa Filho, special advisor to the presidency of Brazil, says that if SA decides to adopt Brazil’s integrated service digital broadcasting terrestrial (ISDB-Tb) standard, it will bring in people to discuss joint ventures for the manufacturing of television sets, mobile television handsets and digital set-top boxes.
Telkom is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the operator were to try to recover costs fully from its customers of servicing and maintaining fixed lines, it would have to double monthly line rental. But if it did so, it would accelerate the already-steepening decline in the number of fixed lines in service. Yet new regulations and growing competition mean it may be unable to avoid a sharp increase in line-rental charges.
With only a few months to go until Telkom becomes SA’s fourth mobile network operator, the question on many people’s lips is whether the fixed-line incumbent will start a price with Vodacom, MTN and Cell C. Telkom hasn’t yet decided on tariffs for its mobile offering. The company’s MD, Nombulelo “Pinky” Moholi, says these must be still be approved by the board