Mamodupi Mohlala, the former director-general of communications, has been chosen by trade & industry minister Rob Davies to head the new National Consumer Commission. The ministry said Davies on Tuesday consulted parliament’s portfolio committee

Recruitment and placements company Kelly Group has hit back at a weekend newspaper report that suggested it cooked its black economic empowerment (BEE) credentials. This week’s Sunday Independent quotes a report

Mobile operators may be forced to stop subsidising handsets next year when the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) takes effect in March. The department of trade & industry has been working on the legislation for years and it’s expected to change fundamentally the way business is done in SA.

SA’s telecommunications industry has assembled on the battlefield with two players, one new, Telkom’s mobile business 8ta, and one reinvigorated, Cell C, getting ready to take on the giants of industry. Some smaller players are gathering on the flanks and others may yet make an entrance.

Vodacom expects to boost headline earnings per share by between 30% and 40% in its financial results in the six months to 30 September 2010. Impairment charges related to its acquisition of Gateway, which hit basic earnings a year ago, were not repeated during the half year

Privately held telecommunications company iBurst is investing more than R100m in a fibre-optic communications network in Gauteng to help it better address the corporate market and grow its retail consumer subscriber base. The company is leasing capacity on Dark Fibre Africa’s network

Newly appointed Democratic Alliance shadow communications minister Natasha Michael has slammed communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda, criticising his leadership style and saying he ought to be “removed from his cabinet position” if the cabinet is reshuffled.

SA’s neglect of access networks for providing broadband connectivity has resulted in the country slipping in a world quality broadband ranking study conducted by Oxford University with US networking company Cisco. It’s the third study by the university

Less than 5% of the world’s Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses remain unallocated, the Number Resource Organization (NRO) warned on Monday. The IPv4 free pool dipped below 10% in January, just nine months ago. Since then, more than 200m IPv4 addresses

It’s here three days later than usual (thanks to a crazy newsday last Friday), but the latest episode of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral, is now ready for download. In this week’s packed show, hosted by Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones, we talk about — yup, you guessed it — Telkom’s launch of 8ta, SA’s fourth mobile operator