Pay-TV operator Super 5 Media on Tuesday retrenched all of its remaining employees, more than 40 people in all, and is now facing the prospect of liquidation if it isn’t able to pay one of its biggest creditors by the end of the week. TechCentral, which last week broke the news of the problems at the company, has now learnt Super 5 Media is facing a claim of as much as R25m from Rothschild, an international investment advisory company.
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Canada’s Research in Motion has unveiled its newest touchscreen device, the BlackBerry Torch, ratcheting up its battle with rivals such Nokia and Apple. The new phone has both a touch screen and a tactile Qwerty keyboard, making it like a hybrid of the company’s popular Storm 2 and Bold 2 handsets.
Telkom sold its controlling stake in Telkom Media, now Super 5 Media, for just R68m, the JSE-listed telecommunications group’s 2010 annual report has revealed. This means Telkom lost a net R403m from the failed venture. It had loaned the business R471m, which it has now written off, according to the report.
Paris Mashile, the former chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), has been named as chairman of newly created Vunani Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of AltX-listed Vunani Limited. He’s also been appointed as CEO of the company’s consulting arm, Vunani Electronic Communications.
Three years ago, when the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) licensed three new pay-TV players, most of us couldn’t wait to see something super. Four new companies were given a chance to bring new shows to SA’s TV screens. Most importantly, they were supposed to provide competition to the incumbent monopoly, MultiChoice.
MTN, Africa’s largest mobile operator, has invested R22m to develop a power-generation plant that it says will halve its electricity costs. The new plant, which MTN dubs the “tri-generation plant”, will be driven by methane gas, which is plumbed directly into the plant from a gas pipeline 5km away from its head office in Fairlands, west of Johannesburg.
Just days after Naspers subsidiary MultiChoice launched a streaming television service on Vodacom’s network, the cellular network operator has launched a product of its own. The company at the weekend announced it would offer a video-on-demand service for cellphones, taking aim at MultiChoice and its DStv Mobile offering.
Episode 4 of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral, is live. In this week’s show, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones talk about the dramatic axing of communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala. We interviewed her this week about how the drama unfolded at the department. We also review the other big stories of the week, including Wananchi’s plans to deploy fibre to the home in Kenya, the “I’m been unfairly maligned” speech by Telkom’s nonexecutive chairman, Jeff Molobela, the impending collapse of pay-TV operator Super 5 Media, the launch of DStv Mobile’s streaming video service, and much more.
Kenya and Tanzania are to get high-speed fibre-to-the-home connections offering a triple-play bundle of broadband, telephony and cable television thanks to a US$200m investment from the private sector. The company behind the project, Wananchi — which is backed by Cisco Capital and East Africa Capital Partners — says it would love to do the same in SA, but the regulatory environment here precludes it from doing so.
Axed communications director-general Mamodupi Mohlala has acceded to a request by President Jacob Zuma to postpone her legal action against communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda. Contradicting media reports elsewhere on the Web on Friday, Mohlala says she has agreed to the president’s request to postpone her legal application for now and a new court date has been set for 26 August.