Browsing: Duncan McLeod

The international media is filled with tales of woe about BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM). The Canadian smartphone company’s share price has lost half its value since the beginning of the year. Yet BlackBerry is SA’s sexiest

Telkom’s new mobile operator, 8ta, last week introduced a mobile broadband special offer that deeply undercuts its parent’s own fixed-line broadband prices. It’s a bizarre situation that underscores Telkom’s lack of a coherent long-term

Telkom, SA’s incumbent fixed-line telecommunications operator, must face up to the fact that it has reached an inflection point. It ought to invest tens of billions of rand to take high-speed fibre-optics into millions of homes and businesses before someone else does

Last week’s purchase by Visa of Cape Town-based mobile payments company Fundamo in a US$110m all-cash deal demonstrates clearly how the race is on to provide electronic financial services using cellphones, especially in emerging markets

The keynote address by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco was distinctly underwhelming. Is the world’s most valuable technology company running short of groundbreaking new ideas?

Just as undersea and terrestrial fibre connectivity is booming around and in Africa, an explosion in satellite capacity serving the region is also under way. The “dark continent” is getting connected to the global village. This week’s annual Satcom conference

When broadcasters switch to digital television, a valuable chunk of radio frequency spectrum will be freed up for broadband. The country ought to have a debate now about how to use this spectrum to bring affordable Internet

Microsoft’s provocative US$8,5bn acquisition of Internet telephony company Skype set tongues wagging in the technology industry last week. The deal has been described as everything from a smart strategic buy to desperate flailing

SA ’s pay-TV market is hotting up with news last week that the country will get its first satellite-based video-on-demand service on 1 September. VOD:TV plans to offer a “subscription and transactional” system that

A year ago, Apple’s market capitalisation blew past Microsoft’s. Now Apple has surpassed its decades-long rival in net profit for the first time in 20 years. The maker of the iPad and iPhone is in the ascendancy. But it’s too early