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.
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Cell C, which launched its third-generation (3G) mobile network in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth on Friday, is playing up its launch offering of two broadband modems with 24GB and 60GB data bundles. But the company has also quietly introduced two new data-only products at prices that are significantly lower than the offerings that are bundled with modems and much cheaper than anything offered by rivals MTN and Vodacom.
The Grid, Vodacom’s somewhat rival to Naspers’s MXit social chat service, is going global. After launching the service in Nigeria and Tanzania in 2009, the cellular network operator has decided to make the service available to cellphone users worldwide.
Telecommunications operator Cell C will launch the first leg of its mobile broadband network in Port Elizabeth. TechCentral has established that Cell C will launch its third-generation (3G) network, on which it is spending about R5bn in 2010, in the Eastern Cape city.
With more than half a dozen SA operators rolling out their own national networks, consolidation in SA’s telecommunications industry looks inevitable. There’s a chance Cell C and Dimension Data could be the ones to kick it off. Didata division Internet Solutions looks a bit like the odd man out these days. The converged service provider, which remains a powerful force in the corporate market, is the only big player in its space that doesn’t have its own significant investment in telecoms infrastructure.
Kenyan telecommunications operator Safaricom has increased its market share from about 60% three years ago to over 80% on the back of its M-Pesa cellphone money transfer service. Now Vodacom is hoping to emulate those market share gains in SA. That’s the word from Mark Taylor, newly appointed MD of Vodacom Payment Services, the company that houses the company’s M-Pesa offering.
Could former SABC CEO Dali Mpofu or former Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig be approached to take the reins at listed telecommunications group Telkom? Mpofu and Knott-Craig are two of the high-profile people external to Telkom whose names have been linked to the job in recent weeks.
Vodacom expects to sign up 10m M-Pesa mobile money users within three years. The telecommunications operator’s director in charge of the product’s launch, Romeo Kumalo, revealed the ambitious target during the product’s launch in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, on Tuesday.
It’s Friday again and that means another episode of SA’s business technology podcast, TalkCentral. This week, your hosts Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones delve into the ongoing drama at the department of communications, where fired communications department director-general Mamodupi Mohlala has been reinstated — at least for now — by minister Siphiwe Nyanda.
Vodacom has lost its exclusivity over Apple’s iPhone in SA: MTN will launch the product in the country within weeks. The cellular network operator will announce late on Thursday afternoon that it will begin selling the iPhone device through its channels. TechCentral has learnt that MTN will issue a press statement later on Thursday confirming what many had already expected: that it has secured a distribution agreement with Apple.