No matter how you look at it, twelve and a half billion US dollars is a lot of money. Sure, in the billionaire playground of Silicon Valley that’s merely a medium-sized company, but in the real world it’s the GDP of Botswana. So when Google

MTN has grown its subscriber base by 7,5% in the six months to the end of June 2011. The emerging markets telecommunications group now has 152,3m active customers across the 21 countries in which it operates. The group has also hiked

After a brief sojourn, TechCentral’s podcast is back with an information-packed show. This week, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson talk about Google’s US$12,5bn acquisition of Motorola Mobility and consider the implications for the ongoing software

Black-owned MobileTV, which hopes to launch a mobile television service in SA, has completed the technical tests using the Korean digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) in Gauteng, says founder and chairman Mothobi Mutloatse. Last week, MobileTV completed

An international panel of experts has declared that the MeerKAT radio telescope being built by the SA team preparing SA’s bid for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) has passed its “preliminary design review” with “distinction”. MeerKAT is a 64-dish radio telescope

The SABC board might need government assistance to deal with retrenchment at the public broadcaster, SABC news reported on Tuesday. Board chairman Ben Ngubane told parliament’s portfolio committee on communication that head count was high. “We need

As the name suggests, the Olympus Tough TG-810, the top of the current Tough range from the Japanese camera maker, is a compact digital camera designed to survive extensive abuse. In terms of resilience, it’s a great camera. But it’s a pity Olympus squeezed so many

In contemporary commercial warfare, there’s only one guaranteed winner: the lawyers. The patents system exists ostensibly to encourage newcomers, protect their intellectual property and encourage innovation. But the reality is the big players are buying up every

Google on Monday said it was buying Motorola Mobility for US$12,5bn in what most analysts are seeing as escalation of the software patents war with Apple and Microsoft. But the acquisition holds both opportunities and big risks for the

Telkom and trade unions will continue wage negotiations at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) on Tuesday, trade union Solidarity said. “The CCMA requested Telkom 10 days ago to obtain a mandate for a wage increase of between