Browsing: Duncan McLeod

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

Dimension Data SA chairman Andile Ngcaba is quietly building a new type of telecommunications business under his Convergence Partners investment vehicle. From satellites to undersea cables

SA and Africa have never had it so good. Almost every month brings news of some or other big broadband project. The latest, a plan to build a high-capacity cable between Brazil, SA and Angola, will bring terabits of new

The playground battle between Vodacom and Cell C over the latter’s new advertising campaign is a signal of something altogether more interesting than them throwing marketing dirt at each other: competition in