Browsing: Duncan McLeod

The leafy Johannesburg suburb of Parkhurst, one of the first in South Africa to get high-speed fibre-to-the-home broadband, now looks set to be the scene of a turf war between two competing fixed-line telecommunications providers. It’s a David vs Goliath battle that could also help decide which

Driven by the rise of broadband, the era of linear television broadcasting will draw to a rapid close in the next decade. New media empires will be built on the back of this change. Established broadcasters that don’t adapt will crumble. A revolution is at hand — a revolution that is going

The irony about the Post Office strike, former First National Bank CEO Michael Jordaan tweeted this week, is that the longer it drags on, the more its customers will move to electronic alternatives — never to return. That the Post Office is in crisis

Two of South Africa’s biggest online retailers, Takealot.com and Kalahari.com, surprised just about everyone this week when they announced plans to merge their operations. The proposed deal is surprising because, until now

Was Microsoft really that desperate to distance itself from what commentator Paul Thurrott calls the Windows 8 “Frankenstein’s monster” that one full version number for the next version wasn’t enough? Microsoft announced this week that

Should South Africa’s mobile operators extend their offerings beyond telecommunications and into a broad range of value-added services such as financial services, media and e-commerce, or should they be low-margin “dumb pipes” over

South African couch potatoes have never had it so good. In the past fortnight, two new video-on-demand offerings have been launched, one using broadband connections to deliver entertainment into

Cell C’s leadership team must feel like it’s on a roller coaster ride it can’t get off. One moment it’s shrieking in delight as its regulator, Icasa, gives it a significant price advantage over its bigger rivals; the next it’s crying out

Over the past 20 years, Telkom has been through the wringer. It’s been abused by politicians and by greedy foreign investors, and it’s made spectacular strategic and operational mistakes that have cost it billions. But somehow, through all of this, it’s arrived at a point today under

Icasa is set to crack open South Africa’s free-to-air television industry to more competition. As South Africa moves to digital broadcasting, the communications regulator is planning to license a third terrestrial player to compete head-on with the SABC and e.tv. If it goes ahead, which