The telecommunications industry has spent the past four years on a journey towards cost orientation, regulatory best practice and parity. That journey must continue and MTN fully expects termination rates to go on falling. But this fall must be informed by a transparent and credible cost study that reflects the
Our president was right to say in his state of the nation address last week that we have some good stories to tell about our 20 years of democracy. Sadly, our public broadcaster is not one of them. I declare my bias in favour of the public broadcaster: I love the SABC. Well, I did until
Dominant incumbents are typically defensive when any attempt is made to curb their otherwise abusive behaviour, but isn’t MTN taking it a bit far? Not content to make “super-normal profits” (more than normal profits, or the amount of revenue generated after paying costs, by a
Microsoft is at a crossroads. Its new CEO, Satya Nadella – only the third person to lead the company in its 39-year history, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer – has to decide if the software maker’s future lies exclusively in the business market, where it remains
You may have seen a resurgence of news about net neutrality in the last few weeks. This is because a US court recently ruled that the communications regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, doesn’t have the power to insist that Internet service providers operate according
For more than a year, I have been saying to anyone that will listen that long-term evolution and video will be a game changer in Africa. The logic for arguing this case was based on the fact that YouTube was in the top five of every country measured by
I often wonder if certain captains of industries are entirely disconnected from reality. It’s the only thing that can explain the breathtaking gall of Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub, who complained publicly that new regulations would cost his company R1bn in 2015, threatening to sue as a result
So, there’s more trouble at Fawlty Towers in Auckland Park. Just two years into her five-year term, SABC group CEO Lulama Mokhobo is stepping down, citing “exhaustion”. It’s a fresh setback for the public broadcaster, which has lurched from one crisis to another for the best part of a decade
Spare a thought for Shameel Joosub and Zunaid Bulbulia. The Vodacom and MTN chief executives must feel like they’re being unfairly picked on for running successful, profitable businesses. This week, telecommunications industry regulator Icasa published final regulations that will
A decade ago, fierce battles were fought to get a number of Africa’s state-owned telecommunications operators into private hands and to strip them of their monopoly privileges. This happened in all but two of what are now sub-Saharan Africa’s most successful economies. The real laggards are
