Browsing: Irene Charnley

South Africa is slipping behind some other African markets in providing mobile broadband, Tom Allen, the chief operating officer of Smile Telecommunications, the telecoms operator founded six years ago by former MTN executive Irene Charnley, warned on Wednesday

South Africa’s hard-working new communications minister, Yunus Carrim, is tackling the challenges in his portfolio with such gusto that he appears to have taken many industry players by surprise. I had the opportunity twice this past week to watch Carrim in action

Although an MTN-commissioned investigation has ostensibly cleared the company of wrongdoing in Iran, its report is replete with examples of how the telecommunications group’s well-connected executives intervened to influence South African diplomacy in its favour. MTN

The Hoffmann Committee, appointed by MTN, has cleared the Johannesburg-listed telecommunications group of wrongdoing in Iran, calling allegations made by rival Turkcell a “fabric of lies, distortions and inventions”. MTN told shareholders on Friday that the committee, chaired top jurist

Uganda is to get a fourth-generation (4G) mobile network using long-term evolution (LTE) technology. MTN’s subsidiary in the East African country will deploy the network in the coming months. MTN claims it will be the first to offer 4G in East Africa, although it appears the company has overlooked Smile Telecoms

Smile Telecommunications, the telecommunications operator started five years ago by former MTN executive Irene Charnley, has signed a deal that will see it investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build fourth-generation (4G) broadband networks in Uganda, Tanzania

Last week Republicans seized on news that David Plouffe, a senior advisor in the White House, had accepted $100 000 from a subsidiary of MTN for two speeches he gave in Nigeria shortly before joining the White House staff in 2010. “Today’s story raises serious questions about [US President] Barack Obama’s senior

Former ambassador to Iran Yusuf Saloojee has been suspended from his position at the department of international relations & cooperation. “Yes, he has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation,” spokesperson Clayson Monyela said. The investigation related to allegations that Saloojee accepted

Vodacom’s long-running legal dispute with a fixer who recently won a case against it in a Democratic Republic of Congo court is still simmering. And accusations are being made of improper influence over the Congo’s judiciary. The Kinshasa Commercial Court ruled in January that Vodacom

Turkish cellphone operator Turkcell has accused SA-based multinational mobile giant MTN of orchestrating a “cover-up” rather than a credible investigation into claims that the South Africans bribed and influence-peddled their way into Iran in 2005. The Turkish company said in a statement that