The SA Communications Forum (SACF), an industry grouping that includes the SABC and the country’s biggest telecommunications operators, plans to lobby the department of communications to include a “return path” in the subsidised set-top boxes that the country’s poorer consumers will purchase when
The switch to digital television broadcasting is on track, communications minister Dina Pule told MPs on Tuesday. “I want to affirm to this house that we are on course on the DTT [digital terrestrial television] process,” she said in the opening debate on her
Last week’s national policy colloquium, organised by the department of communications, drew a degree of cynicism from the telecoms industry. The view among many industry players is that it’s the same old rhetoric with no action. Will this time be different? The industry can be forgiven for suffering from “colloquium fatigue”. Politicians
The battle for the soul of the SABC ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in Mangaung has plunged the public broadcaster into yet another crisis over control of its editorial content. After SABC news chief Phil Molefe was this week placed on special leave after refusing to give CEO Lulama Mokhobo a copy of the daily news diary so she could monitor the
SABC head of news and current affairs Phil Molefe was placed on special leave on Tuesday, the public broadcaster said. SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said Molefe was placed on special leave with immediate effect. He declined to give the reasons for Molefe’s special leave but said the matter was pending discussions
If you worked for five years on one project and had little to show for your efforts, would your boss fire you? The government has been plugging away at the digital terrestrial television migration now for half a decade and the broadcasting sector says the building blocks are still not in place. So what went wrong? And, why
Telkom should be structurally separated into two businesses, wholesale and retail, to facilitate greater competition in SA’s telecommunications industry, says new Democratic Alliance (DA) shadow communications minister Marian Shinn. Speaking to TechCentral in her first wide-ranging media interview
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has raised the idea of creating R700m national venture capital fund, funded by the state, to provide investment capital to help early-stage businesses. The proposal is contained in the opposition political party’s “alternative budget”, published on Tuesday and available here
Gugu Duda has been appointed as the new chief financial officer of the SABC, communications minister Dina Pule announced on Wednesday. “Ms Duda has the relevant qualifications, skills, capabilities and experience required for the position,” the communications ministry said in a statement. She would take up the
At public hearings in Johannesburg on Thursday, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) said it would consider all submissions by interested parties in creating an official definition of what constitutes an “underserviced area” for both Internet access and access to public
