Browsing: Irene Charnley

The leaders of some of South Africa’s biggest information and communications technology companies, including the four mobile operators, have met and agreed that the only way of resolving the impasse over broadband spectrum

The South African economy may be teetering on the brink of a recession, but that isn’t keeping the country’s telecommunications operators from ramping up their capital spending. Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and Cell C, along with a host of smaller players, are all gearing up to make

Smile Telecoms, the wireless broadband communications company founded by former MTN executive Irene Charnley, has raised US$365m (R5bn) in new debt and equity financing to expand its coverage in Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria and establish its first presence in the

Smile Communications has outsourced management of its 4G/LTE networks in all its operations in Africa to Ericsson in a five-year agreement that covers Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The value of the deal has

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