Telecommunications carriers have long grumbled that they spend a fortune building the world’s data networks only to watch the US technology giants reap most of the benefits. Now they fear Silicon Valley will take away their customers, too.
Clad in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, Amy Hood stands before a room of 140 Microsoft recruits. The feeling in the air is a bit like the first day of school, and new hires are taking selfies outside in front of a big Microsoft logo.
It’s relatively easy these days to find critics of Skype, the popular online calling service that Microsoft acquired in 2011 for US$8.5bn. Former devotees routinely gripe on social media that the software has become
Artificial intelligence boosters predict a brave new world of flying cars and cancer cures. Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords. Veteran AI
Microsoft said it will release a translation app for Windows and other operating systems from rivals Apple and Google, part of a broader race between the world’s largest technology companies for supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence. The
Google nailed e-mail with the 2004 introduction of Gmail. But as traditional e-mail falls out of favour with a growing sliver of the population, Google has struggled to make its messaging tools relevant or introduce
While so-called over-the-top messaging services dominate in South Africa as a mobile communication tool, the uptake of voice over IP is slower, say experts. Global digital specialist adviser
Telkom has signalled it’s ready for a serious fight with its bigger rivals, this week taking the wraps off aggressively priced, 4G/LTE data-led mobile packages for both prepaid and contract customers that look set to have its bigger rivals
Twenty gigabytes of mobile 4G/LTE data a month, free on-network calls, 1 500 minutes of free calls to other networks, zero-rated WhatsApp and Viber, free SMSes, and free and unlimited Wi-Fi access at
Allow me to venture a theory… The reason out-of-bundle mobile data rates are (largely) still R2/MB is to help shore up operators’ cratering voice revenue. R2 is an arbitrary number, a relic from over a decade ago, but it’s a stubborn