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
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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
The debate about how, when and whether publishers should charge for the content they provide is reaching fever pitch. Facing some hard economic realities, an increasing number of publishers are looking to monetise their properties by putting walls around some or all of their content and charging for it
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
In my previous column for TechCentral, I mentioned how Anton Rupert used to register his trademarks — and do so on his own — even when his business empire was still a start-up. Rupert recognised the importance of protecting his trademarks. He ultimately made sure that the Remgro group spent
While attention has been focused on television in the digital migration debate, digital radio has been left out in the…
There are many different challenges and difficulties facing a start-up business, ranging from cash flows to marketing to protection. This column, the first in a series, deals with the importance of protecting one’s intellectual property (IP).
Just about everyone in SA’s broadcasting industry has been taken aback by government’s decision to rethink its commitment to the European digital television standard. There are concerns it could set back the country’s digital migration by years