Competing mobile operators MTN and Turkcell were silent this week on the latter’s claims that MTN bribed its way into Iran six years ago. But circumstances surrounding MTN’s audacious entry into Iran, and the SA government’s concurrent diplomatic efforts there, provide a compelling
South Africans have flocked to BlackBerry devices in recent years because of the cheap and unlimited on-device browsing, chat and e-mail offered through the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). Now MTN is hoping to bring similarly priced offerings to other smartphone devices. On Thursday
At public hearings in Johannesburg on Thursday, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) said it would consider all submissions by interested parties in creating an official definition of what constitutes an “underserviced area” for both Internet access and access to public
MTN’s head office in Fairland in north-western Johannesburg was evacuated on Monday morning following an apparent bomb scare. Employees have since returned to work after the threat was declared a hoax. Employees began tweeting about the incident shortly after 10am, with one saying
Emerging-markets telecommunications giant MTN is gearing up to fight a series of damaging allegations and legal action by Turkcell over claims by the Turkish operator that the JSE-listed group was awarded an operating licence in Iran corruptly. MTN claims
Independent telecommunications infrastructure operator Metrofibre Networx has extended its “open-access” fibre network across the Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia, meaning businesses and some residential homes in the area can now get high-speed Internet connections of up to 1Gbit/s. The area covered
MTN is increasing the download speed for users of its “uncapped” Internet products who reach fair-use limits. This follows a four-month trial, which ends this month, in which it offered uncapped mobile broadband without any limitations. MTN, which is the only mobile cellular operator in SA to offer uncapped plans
SA’s telecommunications industry has become “a bit boring” and “looks too settled”, says new Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig, who was named on Thursday as Lars Reichelt’s successor at the mobile operator. He appears keen to change that, promising big changes at Cell C, with a special focus on social networking, mobile broadband
Internet service provider (ISP) MWeb said on Tuesday that its group CEO, Rudi Jansen, is stepping down at the end of February after 15 years at the Naspers-owned subsidiary. Jansen has held the position of CEO since 2005. DStv Mobile CEO
Despite giant strides in the right direction in the past few years in opening up SA’s telecommunications market — making it more competitive and transparent — there are still pockets of monopolistic behaviour. One of these is the application-to-person (A2P) SMS market in SA, which is worth more than R1bn/year in revenue for the mobile network
