Browsing: Alison Gillwald

Over-the-top platforms such as WhatsApp and Skype don’t pay taxes in South Africa, says mobile network MTN. MTN’s corporate services executive, Graham de Vries, made this claim in a presentation at a parliamentary meeting on Tuesday. The meeting discussed

Parliament’s discussions about regulating over-the-top services kicked off on Tuesday with an expert saying that networks fear becoming pure infrastructure players. OTT services such

Democratic Alliance shadow minister of telecommunications & postal services Marian Shinn has accused the minister, Siyabonga Cwele, of creating another useless government talk shop. Cwele

Communications regulator Icasa has settled on the model it intends using to calculate call termination rates as the court-imposed deadline nears for it to draw up new regulations that govern the rates, which operators charge each

Communications minister Yunus Carrim has named CSIR president Sibusiso Sibisi and Research ICT Africa director Allison Gillwald as chair and deputy chair respectively of a new National Broadband Advisory Council, which has been established to advise the minister on the implementation of South Africa Connect

The markets recoiled at news that call termination rates between cellular operators will decrease, seeing it as a boon for consumers and small cellphone operators in particular. But experts say – citing supporting data – that South African cellphone communication is still too expensive

Reductions in mobile termination rates, the fees operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks, has had a direct impact on the retail price of prepaid telephony in South Africa, but tariffs are still far higher than elsewhere in Africa and further big cuts are needed

Reductions in the fees that mobile operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks have not hurt them financially, as they claimed they would. Nor have they led to higher retail prices, lower investments or retrenchments in the sector. These are some of the

Telkom’s R449m fine handed down this week for anticompetitive practices could be only the start of its problems. Senior competition lawyers are expecting a string of damages claims from its competitors. The Competition Tribunal found Telkom guilty of anticompetitive practices, which opens

The reaction of various interest groups to a year-long study by Research ICT Africa into prepaid mobile prices across the continent and SA’s relatively poor showing in it are perhaps not surprising. They nevertheless prompt clarification and hopefully further debate before the issue of the high price of communications in SA is again swept