Triple-play services, consisting of television, telephony and broadband Internet access, delivered over the same physical cable infrastructure, are not something one typically associates with African telecommunications. Now, however, a Kenyan company, Wananchi, is planning to bring fibre connectivity to hundreds of thousands of homes in East Africa, in the process remaking how a continent thinks about what can be done with high-speed connectivity.
A consortium of IT professionals representing global big business have formed an alliance to find a way of bringing cloud computing into the business environment in a more structured way that prevents lock-in to any one computing supplier.
“Where’s the business model?” echoes the cry of that most thick-skinned of beasts, the greater suited market analyst (Homo economicus). Part war cry, part mating call, we’ve grown accustomed to hearing this phrase every time a website with no obvious revenue stream starts to attract attention. For years, each mention of Facebook brought out a squawking chorus of them. But Homo economicus is now deathly silent.
We’ve all heard the big numbers: there are more than 4,6bn mobile phones in the world, many countries have more cellphones than people, and there will be more smartphones than PCs in most countries by 2013.
The Internet Service Providers’ Association of SA (Ispa) has teamed up with the SA Police Service and the Film and Publications Board to combat child pornography in SA. Ispa regulatory advisor Dominic Cull says
One of the most important sets of telecommunications regulations in years will be published this Friday by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). The authority has confirmed an earlier TechCentral report that it will publish regulations this Friday setting out how it plans to bring down wholesale call termination rates.
When Apple announced the iPad tablet computer earlier this year, some analysts wondered if that spelt the end for Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader. On the contrary, the next-generation Kindle is flying out of Amazon’s warehouses.
TechCentral on Tuesday reported how Sentech has to spend millions of rand fixing its famous Johannesburg broadcasting tower, which has fallen into a state of disrepair, with concrete flaking off the structure. The iconic tower has a rich history.
One of Johannesburg’s iconic landmarks, the Sentech broadcasting tower near Auckland Park, is literally falling apart. Bits of concrete are flaking off the 237m-tall structure. The tower is in a state of disrepair
Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda says a task team appointed by him in July 2009 had identified “anomalies” and an “illegal operational model” at state-owned Sentech. Though he doesn’t state it explicity, Nyanda is clearly referring to Sentech’s controversial 2007 spectrum deal with Global Web Intact (GWI).
