Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) president Joseph Kabila has intervened in the ongoing dispute between Vodacom and Congolese Wireless Network (CWN), the junior partner in the JSE-listed cellular group’s operation in the troubled central African nation, to try to find a solution to a protracted dispute between the parties. Earlier this year Vodacom and CWN agreed to international arbitration proceedings in Brussels after relations between the two groups appeared to break down completely.
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A company owned partly by communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda was given a R20m contract to investigate service delivery protests in Mpumalanga, City Press reported on Sunday. The contract was allegedly awarded to Abalozi Security Risk Advisory Services without following tender rules. An Nyanda family trust is alleged to have a 45% shareholding in Abalozi.
Sharlto Copley and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, two of the stars of The A-Team movie, were in SA this week for premieres of the film hosted by Nu Metro and MTN. Copley is already well-known in SA and the rest of the world for his star turn as Wikus van de Merwe in District 9, the SA-flavoured science-fiction hit of 2009. In the A-Team, he takes on the role of HM Murdock, the nutty military pilot played by Dwight Schultz in the original television series.
Well-known and colourful Internet industry personality Justin Spratt has resigned from Dimension Data division Internet Solutions and will join Quirk eMarketing on 1 September. Spratt has been appointed as managing partner of the 80-person digital marketing agency, which was founded by Rob Stokes in 1999.
Government does not understand the magnitude of the “crisis” SA’s telecommunications industry is facing, says former Google SA country manager Stafford Masie. During a panel discussion at the Tech4Africa conference held in Johannesburg on Thursday, Masie, who is now consulting to undersea cable operator Seacom, slammed what he described as a “shambles” at the department of communications as well as problems at the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), which he says are holding back the sector.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications, chaired by ANC MP Ismail Vadi, has summoned the boards of the SABC and Sentech to answer questions about problems affecting both organisations. The committee on Thursday said it had “decided to invite the full board of the SABC to appear before it on 24 August 2010”.
Could an electronic “potato” rescue Africa from poorly developed and expensive communications infrastructure? Steve Song, telecommunications fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, thinks it could go a long way in helping. Song is involved in a project that is developing an innovative open-source project called the Mesh Potato, a sub-US$100 device that he says will bring cheap communications access to the continent.
Government’s telecommunications infrastructure business Broadband Infraco will be ready for commercial launch in a few weeks, says CEO Dave Smith. Smith says that after years of putting together a national fibre network, testing with the other telecoms providers has begun.
Public protector Thulisile Madonsela has cleared communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda of any misconduct. This followed two investigations into tenders awarded to a company Nyanda is allegedly linked to. “It is our hope that these findings put to rest the string of continued malicious allegations made against the minister by opposition parties with regard to what was perceived to be conflict of interest,” Nyanda’s spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso said on Wednesday evening.
A lot of fuss has been made over Motorola’s Droid smartphone, about how it saved the US handset manufacturer’s bacon. Now that the Droid has been released to markets outside the US, including SA — under the Milestone moniker — it’s hard to see what all the excitement was about. Fact is, the Milestone is a fairly bland Android handset in an intensely competitive field.