Neotel is playing down the importance of the retail consumer market to its business, saying its main focus into the future will be on the corporate and wholesale markets. This is after the company signed up fewer than 50 000 retail subscribers. CEO Ajay Pandey says Neotel’s ideal revenue mix is 10% from its retail consumer business, 30% from the wholesale business and 60% from the enterprise space. It does not plan to exit the retail market.
Telkom drew heavy fire from an investment manager and a shareholder at its annual general meeting on Tuesday. The two men accused the JSE-listed telecommunications group of poor corporate governance. Shareholder activist Theo Botha accused Telkom of failing to comply with various elements of the new King 3 codes of corporate governance.
MTN SA appears to have put the worst of its troubles, including its damaging billing-system problems, behind it and has gained market share in the past six months on the back of a jump in prepaid subscribers. Data revenues have leapt higher as demand for broadband Internet access continues to grow and the group has revised its full-year SA subscriber expectations sharply upwards on the back of a strong first-half performance.
Cell C can continue using its controversial new branding, which includes a design that resembles the copyright symbol. There’s even a “reasonable possibility” it will be successful in registering “Cell ©” as a trademark, despite the fact that various applications it made in December 2009 have been “provisionally declined” by the Registrar of Trademarks. These are the views of Don MacRobert, one of the country’s leading intellectual property and trademarks lawyers, who says the cellular operator can continue using the branding despite the registrar’s decision, which was handed down on 2 August, just two days before Cell C unveiled its new branding.
SA’s three biggest cities are all pushing ahead with ambitious fibre-optic network projects, promising businesses and even residential customers cheaper and faster broadband. The municipalities of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town are all pushing ahead with plans to build thousands of kilometres of fibre infrastructure as they try to drive down communication costs in their cities.
A plan by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to cut wholesale call termination rates may be delayed until next year, parties close to the process say. The rates, which were supposed to be cut last month as a first step on a two-year glide path down, are the fees the operators charge each other to carry calls onto their networks.
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has taken tentative steps towards regulating Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and video-on-demand services. The authority released a position paper at the weekend following industry input as to how it should approach the management of the technology.
Are Cell C, Dimension Data and Andile Ngcaba’s investment firm Convergence Partners planning to build a national fibre-optic telecommunications network? Rumours have begun circulating that the three companies are in talks about doing exactly that. TechCentral has established from various parties that preliminary talks are already underway.
SA’s mobile operators are upset at the growing delays they face in having environmental impact assessments concluded for the construction of new base stations. They say it’s holding back the sector. Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt used a media briefing earlier this week to criticise municipal bureaucrats for the lengthy delays.
More than four years after the first mobile-TV service was introduced, only 3,2m users worldwide are paying to receive broadcasts to their handsets, according to research by international analyst firm Juniper Research. This is probably bad news for pay-TV incumbent MultiChoice and cellphone operator Vodacom, both of which have recently introduced mobile-TV products.
