There’s no denying that cutting the cost to communicate is good for South Africa. Cheaper and more ubiquitous communications have a direct and measurable economic impact. This is one of the reasons government wants to have every South African online by the end of the decade. Part of government’s
Browsing: Opinion
When was the last time you heard people, young or old, arguing the merits of different rock bands? I’m guessing it’s been a while. But what about a tiff about their choice of mobile phone? In the last five years, I’ve heard too many to count. Does that make personal technology the rock ‘n roll of this century? The
A hundred years after being popularised, the humble wristwatch is being reinvented for the smartphone era. Several exciting initiatives, including Pebble, a crowd-funded project that has raised more than US$10m, are set to emerge this year. Imagine lounging on
Communications department director-general Rosey Sekese has been placed on “special leave” by minister Dina Pule, apparently after having misled parliament’s portfolio committee on communications about her performance contract on two separate occasions last year. While there has been
What if I told you that modern life as we know it relies on a vast army of thinking machines? There are at least 50m of them on the planet, yet relatively few people would recognise one in a picture. I’m talking about servers – the powerful computers that underpin the Internet, accelerate scientific research
South Africa’s seemingly neverending migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television has been so beset by problems for so long that it would be almost comical if the repercussions for the country’s economy weren’t so serious. It’s been more than a year since South Africa
While titans like Apple, Microsoft and Google are grappling for global dominance, ordinary people around the world have begun tinkering with gadgets again. Just look at the Raspberry Pi. It’s barely bigger than a credit card and costs less than R250, but the Pi is a fully fledged computer. Hook it up to your TV and a
This year will be a pivotal one for the South African SMS industry as the issue of interconnection fees is resolved, and mobile networks charge each other for terminating application-to-person (A2P) SMS messages doing away with the vagaries of the gentlemen’s agreement between the operators that maintain
Speculation has been mounting in recent weeks that Apple is preparing a cheaper iPhone to help it expand more aggressively in emerging markets. The rumours had reached such a point that senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, this week moved to play them down. The
The new year in technology starts off with a bang with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. As in 2012, a lot of focus at CES this year is on innovation in television as manufacturers push to enormous screens with much higher resolutions. There’s almost a sense of urgency