The seventh episode of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral, is now available for download. This week, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones talk about the significant flow of news around MTN’s interim financial results presentation, including plans by its SA subsidiary to build a rural broadband network. We also talk about Cell C’s problems trying to trademark its new logo, communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda’s press conference on digital terrestrial television, Vodacom in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Super 5 Media’s letter to Icasa.

Crystal Dynamics may have made a conscious choice not to sell the new downloadable Lara Croft game under the Tomb Raider brand name, but don’t be fooled. Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light is the best Tomb Raider game that this console generation has given us. The game eschews the third-person camera of traditional Tomb Raider games in favour of an isometric view on the action. Despite the change in perspective, this is a Tomb Raider game in every way that matters, from the devious environmental puzzles to the treacherous traps and precarious platforming.

MTN president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko has described suggestions that India’s Bharti Airtel poses a big threat to the JSE-listed telecommunications group’s interests in Africa as “exaggeration and oversimplification”. Analysts this week raised concerns that Bharti, which recently acquired Zain’s African assets, could start a price war with MTN in several key markets, including Nigeria.

Government remains committed to switching off analogue terrestrial television, and completing the switch to digital broadcasts, by November 2011. But communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda has conceded the deadline may have to be revisited if the country decides to adopt a new standard for digital television. Nyanda was speaking at a press conference in Pretoria, where he announced the new members of the Digital Dzonga advisory council, which will advise government on the country’s planned migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television.

The sale of SA technology powerhouse Dimension Data to Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) is a big step closer. The companies announced on Thursday that NTT’s proposed R24,4bn buy-out of Didata has been given the nod by both the European Commission and Australia’s Foreign Investment Board.

MTN SA plans to build a third-generation (3G) mobile network to offer wireless broadband to consumers in outlying areas. It will build the 3G network at 900MHz. TechCentral has learnt that MTN expects significant growth in demand for broadband services outside SA’s cities over the next few years and so is keen to boost its 3G coverage in these areas.

Telecommunications group MTN faces tougher times in the 20 territories in which it operates outside SA as regulators across Africa and the Middle East begin to flex their muscles. Outgoing group president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko says operators across the region are facing tougher regulations.

MTN SA appears to have put the worst of its troubles, including its damaging billing-system problems, behind it and has gained market share in the past six months on the back of a jump in prepaid subscribers. Data revenues have leapt higher as demand for broadband Internet access continues to grow and the group has revised its full-year SA subscriber expectations sharply upwards on the back of a strong first-half performance.

The board of Africa’s largest mobile phone operator, MTN, should be in a position to announce the name of the group’s new CEO “within the next month or two”. That’s the word from outgoing CEO Phuthuma Nhleko, who was speaking during question time at the presentation of the group’s interim financial results in Johannesburg on Thursday.

Cell C can continue using its controversial new branding, which includes a design that resembles the copyright symbol. There’s even a “reasonable possibility” it will be successful in registering “Cell ©” as a trademark, despite the fact that various applications it made in December 2009 have been “provisionally declined” by the Registrar of Trademarks. These are the views of Don MacRobert, one of the country’s leading intellectual property and trademarks lawyers, who says the cellular operator can continue using the branding despite the registrar’s decision, which was handed down on 2 August, just two days before Cell C unveiled its new branding.