Extraordinary events took place behind the scenes in SA’s cellphone industry in the past week. Alan Knott-Craig played his first hand as Cell C CEO, slashing prepaid voice prices, and Vodacom reacted almost immediately with new rates of its own. But then the bigger operator botched its counter attack by
Browsing: Duncan McLeod
Telkom is inching closer to a deal to sell 20% of its equity to Korea’s KT Corp. Though the foreign direct investment in SA’s economy should be welcomed, there are potential pitfalls government must be careful to avoid. Last week, Telkom announced to
First National Bank this week lifted the lid on a new payment mechanism that uses the GPS feature in modern smartphones. It won’t result in the much-hyped cashless society, but it could greatly reduce South Africans’ reliance on cash over time. The new payment feature, which is included in an update to
And we’re back! This week, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson for a midweek edition of TechCentral’s TalkCentral podcast. In the show this week, we talk about First National Bank’s new geo-payments facility and consider what it means for the other banks and chat about Craig’s Mango flight to test WirelessG’s
The Australian government is investing A$40bn (R325bn) in taking high-speed fibre-optic broadband infrastructure into more than 90% of that country’s homes. The project has the potential to transform Australia’s economy. Should SA try to emulate it? The land of kangaroos, gum trees, sheep and Shane Warne
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
In this episode of TalkCentral, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Craig Wilson chat about last week’s big department of communications’ policy colloquium. We discuss whether anything will flow out of the event and the likely impact that communications minister Dina Pule and her director-general Rosey Sekese will have on the technology
On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Nokia’s debt to near junk status. The share price has been in freefall in the past year, with some analysts painting a bleak future for the Finnish company. Yes, it’s bad. But Nokia is already planting the seeds of its turnaround. There’s no doubt that fortunes are made and lost
It’s like 1999 all over again. On Monday, Facebook announced it was buying photo-sharing company Instagram for US$1bn, netting the start-up’s cofounder, Kevin Systrom, a cool $400m. It’s paying over the odds, but the deal makes sense for Facebook ahead of its flotation on the stock market. At first glance and based on the
John Holdsworth, the businessman who took on the mobile operators over high wholesale call charges and won, has launched a new business that will take advantage of falling prices and faster mobile data networks. He hopes, in the process, to shake up the mobile