Browsing: Vodacom

South Africa’s stately progress towards implementing fibre to the home (FTTH) has taken a turn for the better after two residents’ associations took matters into their own hands. One, Parkhurst in Johannesburg, has appointed a supplier and the other, nearby Parkview, is asking for quotes on delivering home fibre. The big gorillas in South Africa’s

MTN South Africa has opened its 4G/LTE network to prepaid users for the first time, the mobile operator announced on Wednesday. Until now, access to the super-fast 4G network was limited to its contract customers. Rival Vodacom has offered 4G services to both its contract and prepaid users for some time. “The new MTN PayAsYouGo LTE Sim

iPhone users in South Africa – and elsewhere – have reported problems with location service updates that download map data automatically over their mobile data connections, leading to out excessive bills in some instances. The problem that most users have reported to TechCentral – and there some details on Apple’s support forums

How is this for ambitious? Vodacom in South Africa is hoping to sign up 10m subscribers to its M-Pesa mobile banking and payments platform within the next five years. To put that in context, the cellular operator managed to

MTN’s group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa and group chief financial officer Brett Goschen sat down with journalists following publication of the mobile operator’s interim 2014 financial results for the six months to end-June. In this edited extract from the press conference, listen as Dabengwa and Goschen

MTN’s South African operation has again borne the brunt of the price war in the mobile industry, with its revenue in the six months to June slumping by 7% and its profit margin, measured before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, sliding by 1,5 percentage points. The poor numbers were exacerbated by steep cuts earlier this

Overall, Vodacom and Telkom Mobile have South Africa’s best post-paid mobile plans, new data from telecommunications research firm Tarifica claims to show. Virgin Mobile scored bottom of the list, coming in in fifth place overall behind Cell C and MTN, but MTN failed to emerge as the winner in even a single category. The Tarifica scores

Vodacom launched the first US$50 smartphone on its network this week and, although the Smart Kicka, which retails for R549, is aimed at the low-end of the market that until now hasn’t been able to afford anything beyond a basic feature phone, it’s a surprisingly good device. The Smart Kicka may not look like much at first. But for

Telkom, for many years shunned by both institutional and retail investors, appears to have shed its poor image in the investment community, with the market rushing to snap up its shares on the expectation of a significant turnaround in its fortunes. The share price was trading up by more than 6% in lunchtime trading on the JSE on Tuesday

Vodacom has taken the wraps off a new, low-cost smartphone that it hopes will propel adoption of smart devices and Internet use among consumers who haven’t been able to afford a smart device until now. The new Smart Kicka, which is the first Vodacom-branded device, has gone on sale at a prepaid retail price of R549