All the latest technology news from South Africa and around the world.
JSE-listed telecommunications equipment and electronics company Jasco has made an offer to buy another fellow listed company, communications business Spescom. Jasco CEO Martin Lotz says the combination of the two businesses will create a business with annual turnover of R1bn.
Cell C, which launched its third-generation (3G) mobile network in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth on Friday, is playing up its launch offering of two broadband modems with 24GB and 60GB data bundles. But the company has also quietly introduced two new data-only products at prices that are significantly lower than the offerings that are bundled with modems and much cheaper than anything offered by rivals MTN and Vodacom.
In a bid to strengthen its own distribution business, London- and Johannesburg-listed IT group Datatec is making a play for local distribution business Comztek. Datatec says it has made a R97m offer to Comztek’s shareholders for 100% of the business. According to Datatec’s statement, part of the offer will be paid in cash and the rest in new Datatec shares.
Pay-TV licensee Super 5 Media has been granted another extension by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to launch a service. Icasa spokesman Paseka Maleka says the regulator has granted the company another six months to get a service off the ground.
Cell C will begin upgrading its new wireless broadband network to 42Mbit/s within the next six to eight months, CEO Lars Reichelt says. On Friday, Cell C switched on the first leg of its third-generation (3G) cellular network in Port Elizabeth, offering peak speeds of up to 21Mbit/s. It is expected to expand the network to two more cities in September – probably Bloemfontein and Durban.
Cell C finally showed its hand in broadband pricing on Friday as it switched on its third-generation mobile network in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth. The company will offer two broadband packages.
The East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) cable has not made the sort of splash on the SA broadband market as many had expected it to. The 10 000km-long submarine fibre cable, which runs along Africa’s east coast, is the second new cable to arrive on SA shores in the past year. The first was Seacom, which went live in 2009.
Microsoft may eventually build two data centres in Africa, possibly in SA, to serve the continent, but no decisions have been made yet. However, the company will aggressively expand its cloud-based (server-hosted) services to the region, beginning in SA later this year with the launch of Xbox Live, its online gaming and entertainment offering.
The Grid, Vodacom’s somewhat rival to Naspers’s MXit social chat service, is going global. After launching the service in Nigeria and Tanzania in 2009, the cellular network operator has decided to make the service available to cellphone users worldwide.
In a surprising move, MWeb is lobbying government to give Telkom the more than R1bn in cash stashed away in the universal service fund so that it can plough that money into upgrading its network. CEO Rudi Jansen is especially keen for the money to be used to upgrade the so-called last mile of copper cables that connect customers to Telkom’s network.
