TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Musk tells Twitter: prove your bot claims, or the deal is off

      17 May 2022

      300% growth for Pick n Pay asap!

      17 May 2022

      Stablecoins wend wobbly way into the unknown

      17 May 2022

      Vodacom goes big on capex

      16 May 2022

      Load shedding escalated to stage 4

      16 May 2022
    • World

      Intel shareholders reject pay packages for top executives

      17 May 2022

      Musk hints at reduced offer price for Twitter

      17 May 2022

      SpaceX gets $125-billion valuation in private placement

      17 May 2022

      Crypto’s wild week offers a much-needed warning

      16 May 2022

      Terra’s $45-billion face plant creates a crowd of crypto losers

      16 May 2022
    • In-depth

      The standard model of particle physics may be broken

      11 May 2022

      Meet Jared Birchall, Elon Musk’s personal ‘fixer’

      6 May 2022

      Twitter takeover was brash and fast, with Musk calling the shots

      26 April 2022

      Musk wants free speech on Twitter but spent years silencing critics

      21 April 2022

      Musk’s board-seat tweet needed an edit button

      11 April 2022
    • Podcasts

      Everything PC S01E01 – ‘AMD: Ryzen from the dead – part 1’

      10 May 2022

      Llew Claasen on how exchange controls are harming SA tech start-ups

      2 May 2022

      The inside scoop on OVEX’s big expansion plans

      20 April 2022

      Decentralised finance, the ‘end of banks’ – and what comes next

      25 March 2022

      Maxtec and BigFix: helping stop cyberattackers in their tracks

      18 March 2022
    • Opinion

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022

      Cash is still king … but not for much longer

      31 March 2022

      Icasa on the role of TV white spaces and dynamic spectrum access

      31 March 2022

      Minister Ntshavheni is at risk of tripping up

      24 March 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»News»‘Vodacom walked all over us’

    ‘Vodacom walked all over us’

    News By Craig Wilson17 January 2013
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Carel van der Merwe
    Carel van der Merwe

    Vodacom is facing a court challenge from Wi-Fi specialist WirelessG, which claims the mobile operator, South Africa’s biggest, has reneged on a shareholder agreement that grants its partner exclusivity over any Wi-Fi infrastructure Vodacom wants to build or operate.

    WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe tells TechCentral that Vodacom — which owns 26% of the company — has begun to backtrack on the agreements between the parties after it realised that “data offloading” onto Wi-Fi from its mobile broadband network was becoming a significant strategic opportunity.

    He claims Vodacom has held discussions with a number of WirelessG’s rivals in the past nine months and also ran pilot Wi-Fi projects late last year without involving WirelessG.

    “We saw that the spirit of the agreement was not being adhered to. We approached Vodacom’s executive team and asked them to honour the agreement,” Van der Merwe says. “They asked that we relinquish exclusivity before negotiations.”

    WirelessG sold the 26% stake in the company to Vodacom at a 49% discount in exchange for various commercial rights, including exclusivity rights for providing Wi-Fi services and infrastructure, he claims.

    “My shareholders paid for those rights. There was a request for a discount to the share price, which, five years ago, amounted to around R30m. Five years ago, Wi-Fi was a poor cousin of connectivity technologies, but now it’s become important and there’s money to be made.”

    When Vodacom bought the stake in WirelessG, it told the company that it did not have time and resources to focus on new technologies like Wi-Fi and saw the value in getting WirelessG to “conduct research, deploy services, and present them with opportunities and differentiators”.

    “Vodacom wanted to focus on 3G because the company felt it could make money there. Now that Wi-Fi is becoming important, they want to ignore our agreement and walk all over us.”

    WirelessG has spent the past eight months trying to negotiate with Vodacom, according to Van der Merwe. “We escalated the matter to [then-CEO] Pieter Uys and to [current CEO] Shameel Joosub and we were promised there would be commitments about how the company was going to execute the shareholders’ agreement. That deadline hasn’t been met.”

    Van der Merwe says he hopes the matter can be settled amicably, but that Vodacom has given no indication it intends doing so. “We want an irrevocable commitment about implementation plans and timelines.”

    MyBroadband, a consumer forum website which carried a report on the dispute on Thursday morning, quoted Van der Merwe as saying that Internet Solutions had been commissioned to offer Wi-Fi services to Vodacom, in contravention of the mobile operator’s agreement with WirelessG. Internet Solutions MD Saki Missaikos denies this, saying in a terse statement in response to a query from TechCentral that the Dimension Data-owned company is “not providing any Wi-Fi services to Vodacom”.

    Van der Merwe says WirelessG’s court papers contain a strategic document from Vodacom parent Vodafone indicating that it wants to extend its Wi-Fi offerings to the South African operator. These offerings include its international Wi-Fi hotspots, some of which include Internet Solutions’ infrastructure.

    Vodacom spokesman Richard Boorman confirms it received an urgent court application from WirelessG last month but won’t comment as doing so “may prejudice the case”.

    “We’re in the process of compiling a response, which is due on 11 February. The matter is then set down for hearing on 11 March.”

    Boorman says Vodacom believes it has a strong defence but would prefer to reach an agreement out of court.  — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media

    Carel van der Merwe Dimension Data Internet Solutions Saki Missaikos Vodacom WirelessG
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleCitizen Came
    Next Article Cell C CFO resigns

    Related Posts

    Musk tells Twitter: prove your bot claims, or the deal is off

    17 May 2022

    300% growth for Pick n Pay asap!

    17 May 2022

    Stablecoins wend wobbly way into the unknown

    17 May 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Eye on the future: an interview with PureSoftware CTO Tushar Bhatkar

    17 May 2022

    Accelerating test automation

    16 May 2022

    Maxtec provides partners with a seamless credit solution

    13 May 2022
    Opinion

    From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

    19 April 2022

    How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

    8 April 2022

    Cash is still king … but not for much longer

    31 March 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.