Broadcast signal distributor Sentech received a hard rap across the knuckles from members of parliament’s communications portfolio committee on Tuesday for its late distribution of crucial documents. “This is disrespect of the highest order,” ANC MP Eric Kholwane said, after members heard an apology and explanation from Sentech board chairman Quraysh Patel for MPs only receiving copies of his organisation’s revised strategic plan that morning.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications called off a meeting it was due to hold with executives from dysfunctional state-owned signal distributor Sentech on Tuesday morning. Sentech flew four company members, including its chairman, Quraysh Patel, to Cape Town this week to present its turnaround strategy to the committee. However, Sentech’s “plan for sustainability” did not reach the parliamentarians until Tuesday morning, giving them no time to review the document ahead of the meeting.
Cell C has finally released a few details about its €240m (R2,2bn) loan agreement with China Development Bank. The money will be used to restructure the company’s debt. TechCentral reported on 24 August that the mobile operator had secured the loan.
By next year, the IT industry will have recovered fully from the global recession and will have regained the US$3,4 trillion value it had in its previous peak year, 2008, says Gartner global research head Peter Sondergaard. He was speaking during a keynote address at the Gartner Symposium in Cape Town, which kicked off on Monday.
Last week, well-known casino Piggs Peak shut down its online service after a high court ruling effectively outlawed Internet-based gambling in SA. It was a long battle that dated as far back as 2004 when the Gauteng Gambling Board bemoaned the fact that the company did not have a gambling licence in SA and should therefore not allow South Africans to use its service.
The BlackBerry Pearl 3G, more formally known as the BlackBerry 9105, is Research in Motion’s boldest product since the Bold 9700. BlackBerry devices have always tended to conjure up images of businessmen and women, hacking away at e-mail on practical Qwerty keyboards.
Brett Haggard, Nic Callegari and Simon Dingle talk their way through: DStv On Demand available from more Internet service providers…
The Internet is quietly being replumbed. That shouldn’t surprise anyone involved with it; the Internet is always being replumbed. But you might be more surprised to learn that the next few years will bring an unusual burst of changes in that plumbing, some with great potential consequences for anyone who relies on the Net. By its plumbing, I’m referring to the protocols and software that make the core features of the Internet work. These have been evolving steadily since 1969, but I don’t think any period since the early 1980s has experienced as much change as we’ll see over the next few years.
Computer assembler and technology distributor Mustek says dramatic price cuts in broadband, coupled with investments in telecommunications infrastructure, will lead to an improvement in the sales of PCs and monitors and other IT hardware in SA. The company, which published its annual results to 30 June 2010 on Monday, says rapid improvements in local telecoms have resulted in SA’s bandwidth almost reaching “parity with the rest of the world”.
SABC CEO Solly Mokoetle intends to challenge his suspension by the public broadcaster’s board and any disciplinary action that may follow, his attorney said in a statement on Sunday. “Mokoetle has been treated most unfairly. His suspension comes at a time when the functionality of the board that suspended him is an issue that is currently before the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications,” Jurgens Bekker attorney Bongani Dlodlo said.