All the latest technology news from South Africa and around the world.
Cellphone group Vodacom and its partner, financial services firm Nedbank, will launch M-Pesa, Kenya’s wildly popular money transfer service, in SA at the end of August. The two companies have set 31 August as the date for the product’s official SA launch.
A proposed public broadcasting law will place the SABC under the control of the communications minister and mark a return to the days when the ruling party determined what was aired on television and radio, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Friday. “It is the final plank in the ANC’s plan, hatched at Polokwane, to ensure that the SABC reflects the values of the ANC,” Zille wrote in her weekly newsletter.
Well-known and colourful Internet industry personality Justin Spratt has resigned from Dimension Data division Internet Solutions and will join Quirk eMarketing on 1 September. Spratt has been appointed as managing partner of the 80-person digital marketing agency, which was founded by Rob Stokes in 1999.
Government does not understand the magnitude of the “crisis” SA’s telecommunications industry is facing, says former Google SA country manager Stafford Masie. During a panel discussion at the Tech4Africa conference held in Johannesburg on Thursday, Masie, who is now consulting to undersea cable operator Seacom, slammed what he described as a “shambles” at the department of communications as well as problems at the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), which he says are holding back the sector.
SuperSport CEO Imtiaz Patel will succeed Nolo Letele as group CEO of pay-TV broadcaster MultiChoice on 1 October. Letele, who was due to retire later this year, has been named as executive chairman of MultiChoice SA. Announcing the changes on Thursday, a MultiChoice spokesman says the board had agreed on an executive chairmanship to “meet the challenges faced by the underlying entities”.
A senior home affairs official and a business executive have appeared in the commercial crimes court for alleged corruption relating…
Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications, chaired by ANC MP Ismail Vadi, has summoned the boards of the SABC and Sentech to answer questions about problems affecting both organisations. The committee on Thursday said it had “decided to invite the full board of the SABC to appear before it on 24 August 2010”.
Could an electronic “potato” rescue Africa from poorly developed and expensive communications infrastructure? Steve Song, telecommunications fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, thinks it could go a long way in helping. Song is involved in a project that is developing an innovative open-source project called the Mesh Potato, a sub-US$100 device that he says will bring cheap communications access to the continent.
Government’s telecommunications infrastructure business Broadband Infraco will be ready for commercial launch in a few weeks, says CEO Dave Smith. Smith says that after years of putting together a national fibre network, testing with the other telecoms providers has begun.
Zimbabwe’s largest mobile operator, Econet Wireless, has secured a US$60m loan facility from Swedish export credit agency EKN to expand its infrastructure, the firm said Wednesday. The loan would see Swedish telecommunications equipment supplier Ericsson installing additional equipment to expand Econet’s infrastructure in the capital Harare, the company’s largest subscriber base.
