In the past month, news has emerged of plans to build yet more high-capacity undersea cables to wire up Africa. With the continent about to be awash in bandwidth, attention needs to shift to bringing broadband to consumers.
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Telkom will take the wraps off its new mobile telecommunications network in just three weeks from now, on 14 October, and in the process launch SA’s fourth cellular operator. That’s the obvious conclusion to be drawn from an invitation that the JSE-listed telecoms group issued on Tuesday, in which it has invited media and VIPs to an event at Lanseria airport, north of Johannesburg.
Falling mobile termination rates and slow recovery of the economy are dampening the growth of SA’s telecommunications market. That’s according to a new report from BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T). The report forecasts that the industry will grow only 5% over the next five years, with most of that growth coming from data services.
Vodacom has quietly sold its 24% stake in Wireless Business Solutions (WBS) Holdings to the company’s other shareholders. The cellular operator hopes its disposal of its shareholding in iBurst’s parent company will clear the way for it to successfully bid for radio frequency spectrum in the 2,6GHz and 3,5GHz ranges.
Cell C’s third-generation (3G) cellular network went live in Bloemfontein today, making the city the second in SA to benefit from the operator’s 3G offering. Bloemfontein residents hoping to start using the network will have to wait until Friday, which is when the modems will become available.
MTN SA today showed off a ‘green’ base station near Upington, which is based on environmentally-friendly technology that will make it easier for the network to reach rural areas with wireless broadband services. The green base stations form part of a massive investment that MTN SA is making in network infrastructure.
Events conspired against us and we missed last week’s TalkCentral recording. But we’re back with a bumper episode 9 of SA’s business technology podcast, and there’s plenty to talk about. Your hosts, Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones, delve in detail into Cell C’s launch of its broadband wireless network and look at how it’s taking the fight to bigger rivals MTN and Vodacom.
MTN and Telkom, which recently signed a cellular roaming agreement, are facing off in a dispute over wholesale mobile termination rates. Telkom, which is due to launch its own mobile network within the next couple of months, wants to charge MTN — and presumably other operators — 93c/minute to carry calls onto its new network.
South Africans are a cynical lot. When it comes to telecommunications, that cynicism is often justified. Too often, SA operators are big on promises and short on delivery. But Cell C’s new strategy may indeed shake up SA broadband. Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt is a dynamic and colourful character. His colleagues at the cellular network operator say he works harder than anyone they’ve met, often pulling stints late into the night and insisting that his team be available to work similarly long hours.
Telkom and MTN are set to face off at the Independent Communications Authority of SA’s complaints and compliance committee on Thursday over a dispute of interconnection fees, the money they charge each other to carry calls between their networks. Authority spokesman Paseka Maleka Telkom lodged a complaint against MTN at the end of June. It appears the two companies are having trouble negotiating the terms of an interconnection agreement.