SA will soon be awash in cheap international bandwidth. The challenge is getting that bandwidth into the hands of consumers and companies. So, news this week of the launch of a new fibre operator is encouraging. Eassy. Wacs. Ace. Main One. These are the names of new cable systems that are either in the works or already under construction. Together with the Seacom cable in the east and the Sat-3 system in the west, they promise a flood of cheap international bandwidth.
Browsing: Duncan McLeod
I’m sometimes asked by investors whether the growth story has gone out of SA telecommunications stocks. A series of regulations, coupled with growing competition and a weak economy, is putting pressure on operators’ margins. Is it time for investors to abandon the sector? Before I attempt to answer that question, it’s worth looking back at how the telecoms sector in SA has developed over the past decade
Telkom has sent its customers a newsletter with their bills this month in which it tries to rubbish the uncapped broadband offerings introduced by MWeb and other service providers. Instead, it shows how Telkom is still stuck in the past. The newsletter article — headlined “Broadband: put a cap on it!” — doesn’t once
Telkom is a fixed-line operator with ambitions to get into mobile telecommunications. Analysts aren’t sure it should be investing in a mature cellphone market. Do they have a point? Should Telkom be sticking to its knitting in fixed lines? Pity whoever is appointed to replace Reuben September
The department of communications has thrown SA’s migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television into disarray. It’s time to end all the nonsense around different standards and for the industry to move ahead. Business leaders in SA have always shown a reluctance to criticise government. Where they
One of the questions I’m most often asked by readers is what high-definition (HD) television set they should buy. With a bewildering array of choice in flat-panel TVs, it’s not an easy question to answer. I thought I’d put it to an expert. Gerdus van Eeden knows more about broadcasting technology than just about anyone in SA. The MultiChoice chief technology officer is a veritable font of knowledge on all things TV-rela
SA is about to auction off a chunk of radio frequency spectrum that can be used to provide wireless broadband services. Let’s hope our operators don’t do what their European counterparts did a decade ago with 3G spectrum. It’s known as the great telecommunications crash of 2001. Mobile operators in the UK and Germany bid ridiculous amounts — cumulatively, hundreds of billions of rand
Why do people fly all over the world? In many cases it’s simply not necessary. And with interesting new videoconferencing technologies being developed, long-haul travel may eventually become the exception in business rather than the rule. It always amazes me how journalist colleagues
Government often argues that it must retain its stake in Telkom because the telecommunications company is a “strategic national asset”. But with competition intensifying by the day, the best thing that could happen to Telkom — and its customers — would be for government to sell up
While attention has been focused on television in the digital migration debate, digital radio has been left out in the…