“Social is not just a bolt-on marketing channel. It will have true business-wide impact,” says to Accenture’s Tech Vision Report for 2012. The impact is already there to see: In the US, Facebook has become the dominant tool for communication to such an extent that universities have
If anyone needs confirmation that there is a price war going on in SA’s cellphone sector, a quick look at last Sunday’s newspapers will confirm it. Take the Sunday Times, for example. In the first 16 pages of news last week, five pages had huge advertisements from Cell C, Vodacom and MTN
Persistent delays in announcing the financial close of the first 28 large renewable energy power plants in SA is cause for grave concern. These projects had navigated the first window of the country’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer’s Procurement Programme
The country’s move to digital TV has been plagued for years by delays and bad decisions. It’s tempting to call it a comedy of errors, except this isn’t funny. The delays could cost SA dearly, particularly as vast chunks of valuable spectrum being used by broadcasters needs to be freed up so
It’s been a busy year for Microsoft. The company has taken the wraps off Windows 8, talked up its forthcoming Surface tablet computers, bought enterprise social network Yammer, made updates to its search service Bing and commercially launched its cloud-based Office 365 suite
The resignation last week of Vodacom Group CEO Pieter Uys raises interesting questions about the future of SA’s most powerful mobile phone operator under the UK’s Vodafone, especially as it faces an increasingly fractious and competitive industry. When
In mid-June 2012, when the big Internet players revealed their cards in the highest stakes game in Web history, the best Africa could come up with was four predictable geographic generic top-level domains, namely .joburg, .durban, .capetown and .africa. There were also a few applications from our pals over at
The question of what SA should do about Telkom has occupied many minds, especially since its proposed deal with Korea’s KT Corp was blocked by cabinet. Telkom’s management team put on a brave face after the deal was scuppered, saying the KT deal would
Vodacom announced a new set of smartphone contract tariff plans at the weekend under the heading “all-in-one Smart Plans”. Unfortunately, Vodacom seems intent on continuing to offer consumers packages that are founded on obfuscation and copious fine print rather than simplicity and transparency
Once again, communications minister Dina Pule has made all the right political statements when she announced that providing connectivity to impoverished rural communities is a key priority for the department of communications. Suggesting, as she did yesterday, that it would cost as much
