South Africa’s mobile operators argue that so-called over-the-top (OTT) service providers, and especially WhatsApp, are skimming their voice revenues. They claim the business model used by these OTT providers – companies such as Google, Facebook and, yes, WhatsApp – is unfair. European
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So reads the opening line of Leon Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The novel comes to mind when looking at the prospects that confront mobile money. Success stories have many similarities, but failed efforts fail for their own
Johannesburg has placed 29th out of 40 cities in a new ranking on ICT maturity. The report, by Ericsson, has placed Cairo, Egypt in 35th place, while Lagos, Nigeria is in 38th position. Ericsson’s latest Networked Society City Index ranks the 40 cities’ ICT maturity in terms of the leverage they get from technology
A full six months after President Jacob Zuma announced he would split the department of communications in two, his office appears set to issue a new proclamation to determine the transfer of functions between the new departments of communications and telecommunications
Democratic Alliance MP Natasha Michael on Tuesday demanded public enterprises minister Lynne Brown supply parliament with all maintenance records for the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga. In what appears to be a continuation
In Interstellar’s near-ish future, our climate has failed catastrophically, crops die in vast blights and America is a barely-habitable dustbowl. Little education beyond farming methods is tolerated and students are taught that the Apollo landings were Cold War propaganda hoaxes. Against this unpromising
Vodacom intends rolling out high-speed fibre-optic broadband to 250 000 end points within the next three years. This will include connecting 150 000 homes and 100 000 businesses, the telecommunications operator’s
The high court in Johannesburg will hear an urgent application this week from Cell C to have a banner set up by a disgruntled customer removed, the company said on Monday. “Today the court indicated that the case will be
Just two months after Mr Price announced that it would be South Africa’s second mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) after Virgin Mobile, another company has announced plans to venture into the MVNO space. Cape Town-based Smart Mobile, which specialises in providing cellular services and handsets
In a move that could rattle its competitors’ cages, Telkom has launched a new package, called Unlimited Lite, offering customers unlimited calls to fixed-line networks and to its own mobile network for R599/month. Unlimited Lite is a “lighter version” of Telkom’s Completely Unlimited plan. Unlimited Lite packages are
