A lot of fuss has been made over Motorola’s Droid smartphone, about how it saved the US handset manufacturer’s bacon. Now that the Droid has been released to markets outside the US, including SA — under the Milestone moniker — it’s hard to see what all the excitement was about. Fact is, the Milestone is a fairly bland Android handset in an intensely competitive field.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has taken tentative steps towards regulating Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and video-on-demand services. The authority released a position paper at the weekend following industry input as to how it should approach the management of the technology.

Axed communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala has hit back at remarks made by her replacement, Harold Wesso, who alleged in parliament on Tuesday that he had inherited a “sinking ship”. Wesso, who has been installed as acting director-general until a permanent replacement can be found, reportedly told parliamentarians that staff morale at the department had collapsed.

Telecommunications company Neotel has unveiled its first prepaid offering, announcing on Wednesday that it would charge 20c/minute for ad-hoc prepaid data and 50c/minute for calls to Telkom and other Neotel numbers. Neotel is “soft launching” its first prepaid product this month in the hope of improving its poor performance in the retail consumer market, where it has signed up fewer than 50 000 paying customers.

SA’s cellular communications market is about to get a big shake-up as two players, one new, Telkom Mobile, and one reinvigorated, Cell C, get ready to go toe to toe with each other and incumbents MTN and Vodacom. SA’s smallest mobile operator, Cell C, has never had an easy time of it. Launched a decade ago after a particularly troubled birth, the operator has faced an uphill battle against dominant incumbents MTN and Vodacom.

International security company Kaspersky Lab says the first SMS Trojan Horse for the popular mobile operating system Android has been identified. Kaspersky says the Trojan, known as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, has already infected a number of mobile devices.

Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard and Jon Tullett are our panellists this week. They join Simon Dingle to discuss Wave’s demise and Google’s long-term prospects, Telkom’s apparent new aggression, the Eassy cable going live, MWeb and Afrihost, Kenya’s Wananchi, Cell C’s new brand and direction, and much more

JSE-listed technology services group Gijima is still in talks with government to resolve a dispute over the validity of the R2,5bn “Who Am I Online” contract. However, the company may head to court if discussions remain deadlocked.

Are Cell C, Dimension Data and Andile Ngcaba’s investment firm Convergence Partners planning to build a national fibre-optic telecommunications network? Rumours have begun circulating that the three companies are in talks about doing exactly that. TechCentral has established from various parties that preliminary talks are already underway.

JSE-listed technology group Altech is putting its muscle behind its Internet business, Technology Concepts, with plans to turn it into a tier-one service provider. Altech bought Technology Concepts last April, before it signed a deal with undersea cable Seacom. The move led many in industry to believe Altech would become a champion of local Internet provision.