Communications regulator Icasa’s 2014 call termination rates are “invalid and unlawful” but the cuts to the rates will take effect as planned on 1 April for a period of six months, high court judge Haseena Mayat ruled on Monday. Mayat said she was exercising her
MTN South Africa, which has lost market share in prepaid telecommunications to rivals in the past year, is attempting to claw back those losses. It is offering prepaid users with dormant Sims with airtime to induce them to use the network again. Chief marketing
Vodacom intends tabling an offer of US$460m (about R5bn) to buy Neotel, according to a report published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. The newspaper, quoting an unnamed executive at India’s Tata Communications, Neotel’s holding company, said that Vodacom, which is a subsidiary of the UK’s Vodafone, will also take on Neotel’s
A lack of regulation in the mobile network market would likely harm consumers, the high court in Johannesburg heard on Wednesday. Kate Hoffmeyer, for Cell C, argued that if MTN and Vodacom were granted interim relief through the court suspending Icasa’s 2014 regulations, this would result in the market being
MTN and Vodacom should have disclosed their costs for calls to other networks, the high court in Johannesburg heard on Wednesday. David Unterhalter SC, for communications regulator Icasa, argued that the companies would not reveal these costs to Icasa when
New call rates between cellphone networks aimed at stimulating competition resulted from a “half-baked experiment”, the high court in Johannesburg heard on Tuesday. Frank Snyckers SC, for Vodacom, argued that communications regulator Icasa’s 2014 regulations for call rates, set to be introduced next month, should have taken into account the structural
Cellphone network operators MTN and Vodacom took their fight against the introduction of new call termination rates to the high court in Johannesburg on Tuesday. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has conceded there are problems with its proposed model for mobile termination rates. These are the
Naspers-owned comparison shopping site PriceCheck has inked a deal with MTN that will see the release of a co-branded version of the site’s mobile application in South Africa. The two companies claim the deal is the country’s first between a mobile operator and an e-commerce company. The co-branded app will feature
Text messaging may be dying out as a means of communication in many parts of the advanced world, but it may yet prove to be a vital life-saver in flood-prone African villages. An early-warning system that aims to capitalise on the explosive growth of mobile phone
On the eve of an historic court battle between Icasa and mobile operators MTN and Vodacom, the communications regulator has revealed in papers filed at the high court in Johannesburg that it intends reconsidering its proposed cuts to call termination rates. In an answering affidavit submitted to the high court, Icasa says it has
