In February, communications minister Dina Pule announced that the digital television switch-on was being moved from April to September. When a country switches from analogue television to digital, there are two important dates. The first is when digital television signals are launched and the second is when the analogue
In mid-June 2012, when the big Internet players revealed their cards in the highest stakes game in Web history, the best Africa could come up with was four predictable geographic generic top-level domains, namely .joburg, .durban, .capetown and .africa. There were also a few applications from our pals over at
The man who helped pioneer media giant Naspers’s online expansion, Antonie Roux, passed away in a hospital in Germany in Sunday after undergoing surgery. He was 54. Roux, who was a former CEO of Internet service provider MWeb, joined the Naspers group as a junior technician in 1979 and was a founding member of pay-TV
If DStv-operator MultiChoice gets the go-ahead, get ready for Web addresses such as bigbrother.mnet and guide.dstv sometime next year. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has released a list of the applicants for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that will supplement existing
As manufacturers, we care what the set-top box specification says. We can actually produce any box to any specification. However, we remain duty-bound not to stand by idly when there is a deliberate distortion of facts, such as is happening now on the issue of the “return path” that would allow consumers to
The SA Communications Forum (SACF), an industry lobby group whose members include the SABC and the big telecommunications operators, wants a “return path” built into the government-subsidised set-top boxes that will be used for digital terrestrial television, allowing South Africans to surf the
Multinational media company Naspers released its interim results for the six months to 30 September on Tuesday. They show subsidiary Multichoice has enjoyed far slower growth than in 2010 but the group’s Internet interests are expanding rapidly and accounting
In recent weeks, it’s been almost impossible not to miss M-Net’s criticism of everything that makes for SA’s broadcast digital migration programme, writes Muzi Makhaye. M-Net’s calls for a cheap “converter box” to replace set-top boxes in the migration are as absurd as
M-Net has hit back at competitor e.tv over allegations by the free-to-air broadcaster that the pay-TV operator is acting out of self-interest in proposing that SA adopts cheaper digital converters rather than more expensive set-top boxes in the migration to digital
Free-to-air broadcaster e.tv has slammed M-Net for suggesting last week that the country would be better off scrapping plans to build set-top boxes for digital terrestrial television, saying the pay-TV operator is acting out of self-interest only. M-Net’s director for legal
