Two weeks ago, Icasa provisionally awarded licences to five new subscription television broadcasters. It hopes the move will help crack open what has become a highly concentrated market that is now thoroughly dominated by one operator, MultiChoice. The communications regulator will be hoping that it is more successful in this
South Africa’s mobile price war appears to be intensifying, with Vodacom announcing on Friday that it would cut its effective prepaid rate, on a promotional basis, to 50c/minute for customers who buy its new “Chat for 20” product. The new “promotional bundle” offers 20 voice minutes for R10 to call any network
Vodacom has quietly cut its prepaid call rate to 79c/minute on per-second billing, just weeks after MTN did the same. However, the new Vodacom rate is promotional, and expires on 14 July. If Vodacom makes the new 79c rate permanent – by filing the tariff with communications regulator
As South Africa inches slowly towards migrating from analogue to digital terrestrial television, communications regulator Icasa has provisionally granted licences to five new pay-TV operators following an exhaustive hearings process that took place in 2013. The companies and consortia that have bid for the licences
MTN has moved to make permanent its 79c/minute prepaid call tariff, greasing the wheels toward a possible price war in South Africa’s mobile industry and piling the pressure on debt-laden Cell C. “MTN South Africa has lodged the required paperwork with [communications regulator] Icasa to permanise [sic] its
The soon-to-be-promulgated changes to the laws that govern South Africa’s information and communications technology sector, found in the Electronic Communications Amendment Act and the Icasa Amendment Act, are still being digested by the sector. Of course, there are many problems with the changed laws, but they provide
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is set to hear a complaint by the South African Police Service (SAPS) against the Democratic Alliance’s election advertisement on Thursday morning. “The SAPS said in their complaint that the television advert would incite violence against the police,” said Icasa spokesman
South Africa’s mobile telecommunications operators must cooperate with Icasa in providing the information the communications regulator needs to draw up new regulations governing call termination rates. That’s the word from communications minister
Communications regulator Icasa has won a high court battle against iBurst parent Wireless Business Solutions, with the court finding that the telecommunications operator was using radio frequency spectrum without paying the required licence fees. The judgment
If there was anyone still doubting that the price war, triggered in part by communications regulator Icasa’s cuts in call termination rates, is starting to take its toll on South Africa’s mobile industry, they would have been disabused of that notion this week with the news that the Reunert-owned Nashua Mobile is to close down. As many as 600 people
