All the latest technology news from South Africa and around the world.
International security company Kaspersky Lab says the first SMS Trojan Horse for the popular mobile operating system Android has been identified. Kaspersky says the Trojan, known as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, has already infected a number of mobile devices.
JSE-listed technology services group Gijima is still in talks with government to resolve a dispute over the validity of the R2,5bn “Who Am I Online” contract. However, the company may head to court if discussions remain deadlocked.
JSE-listed technology group Altech is putting its muscle behind its Internet business, Technology Concepts, with plans to turn it into a tier-one service provider. Altech bought Technology Concepts last April, before it signed a deal with undersea cable Seacom. The move led many in industry to believe Altech would become a champion of local Internet provision.
Songs in Nokia’s SA music store will be free of digital rights management (DRM) software from 9 September, meaning consumers will be able to copy their downloaded tunes and listen to their purchases on any device of their choosing. They’ll also be in MP3 format and available for Apple Mac and Linux users for the first time. At the same time, the name of the Finnish company’s music store is changing from the Nokia Music Store to Ovi Music.
Deputy home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba’s plan to fast-track the drafting of a law that will compel Internet service providers to filter adult content on their networks has telecommunications industry players concerned. They say the bill is not practical. Earlier this year, the Justice Alliance of SA (Jasa) produced a draft Pornography Bill, which holds Internet and mobile providers legally responsible if their users download porn onto their computers.
Bandwidth on the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy), a new, 10 000km-long submarine fibre-optic cable on Africa’s east coast, is now available from Neotel and MTN, the two telecommunications operators announced at a press conference on Thursday. At the same time, the design capacity of the system has almost been trebled, going from 1,4Tbit/s to 3,8Tbit/s, making it the fastest cable system serving the African continent. However, only 60Gbit/s on that capacity has been “lit up” so far.
Web search giant Google has pulled the plug on its Wave service, saying it hasn’t gained the traction it needed to be sustained. In a posting on its official blog, Google says it will no longer develop Wave as a standalone system. However, it says some of the technology will be used in other products.
South Africans’ last hope for more competition in the country’s pay-TV market, Walking On Water Television (WowTV), is gearing up to launch a satellite TV service within the next couple of months. TechCentral can reveal that WowTV plans to launch two bouquets of channels, one costing R49/month and the other R99/month. The low prices suggest the company is hoping to appeal to a broad market.
Cell C’s plan to sell its network of base stations should be concluded within the next four weeks, says CEO Lars Reichelt. In March, TechCentral broke the news that SA’s smallest mobile operator was considering selling parts of its base station network, and then leasing that infrastructure back from the winning bidder.
Cell C’s R5bn broadband mobile network will be launched in about three weeks, says its CEO, Lars Reichelt. The third-generation (3G) network, which is capable of theoretical download speeds of up to 21Mbit/s, will be launched in phases across six cities.
