Browsing: Telkom

Telkom’s chief financial officer, Peter Nelson, appears to have quit his job in part because of frustrations with the way the telecommunications group is being led by its board of directors. Telkom surprised the markets on Tuesday afternoon when it announced that Nelson had tendered his resignation just days after CEO Reuben September left the group.

In a shock development, Telkom chief financial officer Peter Nelson has resigned from the telecommunications group. The move comes less than a week after the departure of group CEO Reuben September. In a short statement issued to the JSE’s Sens news service on Tuesday afternoon, Telkom says Nelson has informed the board of his resignation as director and chief financial officer with effect from 9 October 2010.

Vincent Raseroka has been appointed as acting CEO of Multi-Links, Telkom’s deeply troubled operation in Nigeria. Raseroka will hold the post while the telecommunications group searches for someone to replace Jeffrey Hedberg, who has been appointed as Telkom CEO, replacing Reuben September. Raseroka, who had been Multi-Links’s chief operating officer, takes over with immediate effect. He was previously CEO of SAA technical and held various executive positions at packaging business Nampak.

Former Cell C CEO, American national Jeffrey Hedberg, has been appointed to lead Telkom as group CEO in an acting capacity following a decision by Reuben September to end his contract early. September, who has been expected to leave Telkom in November, has elected to leave now. Senior sources at Telkom say developments in recent weeks, in which the board decided not to renew his contract, have taken a toll on September’s health.

Did you know SA is supposed to have a telecommunications museum? Few people do. But according to chapter 13 of the Electronic Communications Act, the department of communications must create and manage a museum that showcases the evolution of the history of communications technology in SA.

Seacom has secured alternative capacity options for its customers, but Internet service providers will be charged a “small premium” to use them. A fault on the Seacom cable between Mumbai in India and Mombasa in Kenya cut off many Internet users on Monday, with repairs expected to take a week or more.

SA will soon be awash in cheap international bandwidth. The challenge is getting that bandwidth into the hands of consumers and companies. So, news this week of the launch of a new fibre operator is encouraging. Eassy. Wacs. Ace. Main One. These are the names of new cable systems that are either in the works or already under construction. Together with the Seacom cable in the east and the Sat-3 system in the west, they promise a flood of cheap international bandwidth.

Telkom is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the operator were to try to recover costs fully from its customers of servicing and maintaining fixed lines, it would have to double monthly line rental. But if it did so, it would accelerate the already-steepening decline in the number of fixed lines in service. Yet new regulations and growing competition mean it may be unable to avoid a sharp increase in line-rental charges.

Seacom says it still hasn’t finalised the last stretch of its undersea cable through the Red Sea in Egypt, a fact that has bedevilled the telecommunications system. A fault on the Seacom cable between Mumbai in India and Mombasa in Kenya plunged SA businesses and consumers into Internet darkness on Monday, with repairs expected to take at least a week to complete. Seacom suffered similar downtime in April when a segment