It emerged this week, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, that Snapchat, a Californian start-up that develops a smartphone app of the same name popular among teens, recently spurned a US$3bn-plus all-cash offer from Facebook to buy it out. The offer value was at least three times the already
Communications minister Yunus Carrim demonstrated in parliament this week that government may finally be dealing decisively with the impasse over digital terrestrial television that is undermining efforts to get more South Africans connected to broadband. Carrim’s remarks to
Sipho Maseko is a really nice guy – which makes me want to pity him over the challenge he’s taken on at Telkom. Some would say accepting the group CEO position at South Africa’s biggest fixed-line operator is like grabbing a tiger by its tail. Sooner rather than later, you get eaten
With the release of Windows 8.1 this week, Microsoft did an about-turn and brought back the Windows “Start” button, found on Windows computers for 17 years until the company killed it off in 2012 in Windows 8. The Start button has a storied history, having first appeared
This may go down as the week that changed everything in South Africa’s telecommunications industry, the one that signalled the start of the end of the duopoly grip held by Vodacom and MTN. It started nine days ago when sector regulator, the Independent Communications
TalkCentral hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson dive into the big technology stories of the past week — and there’s plenty of ground to cover. In the show, we talk about telecommunications regulator Icasa’s big announcement on mobile termination rates, Cell C’s decision
Watching BlackBerry over the past few years has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The company, whose name was once synonymous with smartphones, has stumbled from one disaster to another. This week, things got a lot worse. BlackBerry
Talk of consolidation in the telecommunications industry is rife, with speculation growing that a number of operators are either in play or may soon be. But how might a flurry of mergers and acquisitions play out? At the centre of current speculation is Neotel. Licensed
TalkCentral hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson dive into the big technology stories of the past week. In the show this week, we talk about former communications minister Dina Pule’s censure in parliament, new communications minister Yunus Carrim on local-loop unbundling and
The price war in South Africa’s mobile industry is starting to take its toll, evidenced this week by the declining subscriber numbers at MTN, which conceded that it had been too slow in cutting its rates to match its rivals. But behind the scenes a much more interesting battle is brewing
