All the latest technology news from South Africa and around the world.
Ousted Kelly Group director Mthunzi Mdwaba will have his say at disciplinary hearing on 22 September. Until then, sources say, he has been placed on paid leave. Mdwaba was stripped of his directorship and his position as deputy CEO of the Kelly Group, a recruitment and technology training business, last week. He was also suspended from the company “pending an investigation”.
Telecommunications operator Cell C will launch the first leg of its mobile broadband network in Port Elizabeth. TechCentral has established that Cell C will launch its third-generation (3G) network, on which it is spending about R5bn in 2010, in the Eastern Cape city.
Could former SABC CEO Dali Mpofu or former Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig be approached to take the reins at listed telecommunications group Telkom? Mpofu and Knott-Craig are two of the high-profile people external to Telkom whose names have been linked to the job in recent weeks.
Broadcast signal distributor Sentech received a hard rap across the knuckles from members of parliament’s communications portfolio committee on Tuesday for its late distribution of crucial documents. “This is disrespect of the highest order,” ANC MP Eric Kholwane said, after members heard an apology and explanation from Sentech board chairman Quraysh Patel for MPs only receiving copies of his organisation’s revised strategic plan that morning.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications called off a meeting it was due to hold with executives from dysfunctional state-owned signal distributor Sentech on Tuesday morning. Sentech flew four company members, including its chairman, Quraysh Patel, to Cape Town this week to present its turnaround strategy to the committee. However, Sentech’s “plan for sustainability” did not reach the parliamentarians until Tuesday morning, giving them no time to review the document ahead of the meeting.
Cell C has finally released a few details about its €240m (R2,2bn) loan agreement with China Development Bank. The money will be used to restructure the company’s debt. TechCentral reported on 24 August that the mobile operator had secured the loan.
By next year, the IT industry will have recovered fully from the global recession and will have regained the US$3,4 trillion value it had in its previous peak year, 2008, says Gartner global research head Peter Sondergaard. He was speaking during a keynote address at the Gartner Symposium in Cape Town, which kicked off on Monday.
Computer assembler and technology distributor Mustek says dramatic price cuts in broadband, coupled with investments in telecommunications infrastructure, will lead to an improvement in the sales of PCs and monitors and other IT hardware in SA. The company, which published its annual results to 30 June 2010 on Monday, says rapid improvements in local telecoms have resulted in SA’s bandwidth almost reaching “parity with the rest of the world”.
SABC CEO Solly Mokoetle intends to challenge his suspension by the public broadcaster’s board and any disciplinary action that may follow, his attorney said in a statement on Sunday. “Mokoetle has been treated most unfairly. His suspension comes at a time when the functionality of the board that suspended him is an issue that is currently before the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications,” Jurgens Bekker attorney Bongani Dlodlo said.
In a surprising turn of events, Kelly Group has lifted the suspension Mthunzi Mdwaba. Less than a week after Kelly stripped Mdwaba of his directorship and suspended from the company, the group’s financial director Ferdie Pieterse released a memo to staff on Friday saying the suspension had been “lifted with immediate effect pending due process”.
