| Second national operator Neotel has dropped its peak rates to meet the reduction in mobile termination fees. The company says it will drop its peak rate from R1.20 per minute to 96c per minute to all operators, barring Cell C. "We have always said any reduction in interconnection rates must benefit the consumer and we are happy that even our competitors are beginning to echo this message," says Neotel executive head of corporate communications Wandile Zote. He says the reduction currently excludes the | | State-owned telecoms infrastructure provider Broadband Infraco is staffing up in preparation for a trial service on its network in the next few months. Infraco was formed three years ago, when government combined Eskom and Transnet's ICT infrastructure with the aim of launching a backbone that would aid in reducing the costs of communication in SA. CEO David Smith tells ITWeb that the state-owned entity is gearing up to be able to provide services to the telecommunications market. He says there are a | | Within days of mobile interconnection rates being cut, SAs two biggest cellphone operators, MTN and Vodacom, have slashed their peak-time prepaid voice tariffs. The two companies have cut prepaid rates between 6am and 8pm on weekdays by as much as 40%. Interconnection rates are the fees the mobile operators charge each other and other operators to carry calls onto their networks. The rate during peak time was cut from R1,25/minute to 89c/minute on 1 March. Now MTN and Vodacom have introduced prepaid | | A private telecommunications line will be set up during the World Cup soccer tournament to connect the international broadcasting centre in southern Johannesburg directly to Europe. Tata Communications will offer this international link in South Africa via the Seacom and SAT3 undersea telecommunications cables. The overland link to Johannesburg will be through the Neotel network, Neotel being Tata Communications' South African subsidiary. But the group needs to enter into a partnership with its local | | You do not want to live on Omega Street in Pomona, Gauteng, where not a single resident along the dusty stretch of road has a telephone line that works. Some of them are still paying Telkom for the rental of the line every month - although they have not been able to use their phones for up to three years. After thieves stole copper cables in the Pomona, Kempton Park, area at least four times, Telkom simply refused to replace them again, declaring the area "non-viable". The parastatal said that "copper cable |
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| British Telecom yesterday announced that it will be opening its fibre broadband ducts to rival internet service providers. The move allows providers to offer their own customised fibre optic broadband packages in much the same way as they currently to using Local Loop Unbundling, or LLU. This saves ISPs the enormous cost of digging up roads and sidewalks, as well as increases competition in the broadband market. BT CEO Ian Livingston said: "We told Ofcom last year we're willing to provide open access to | | According to the UKs largest Wi-Fi provider, The Cloud, networks dealing with mobile internet are on the verge of a "meltdown." A report released by the company today claims that traffic on mobile networks increase by a factor of 10 every year, rendering the industry a victim of its own success. The report also forecasts that demand placed on the mobile networks will by 2015 be almost 100 times greater per user than it is currently. "Smartphones fundamentally change the way we use our mobile phone. A | | Punting a Tory government, Shadow chancellor George Osborne said broadband speeds of 100 mbps would be delivered to the "majority" of homes by 2017, with private investors having to pay for rural areas. Osborne said "In the 19th Century we built the railways. In the 20th Century we built the motorways. In the 21st Century let's build the super-fast broadband network that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Britain." The Tories said money from private investors would pay for better cabling, while | | By the end of 2010 Malaysia will meet its 50 percent broadband penetration target, according to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. Numerous efforts by the Government to bridge the digital divide had delivered positive results, with 31.7 broadband penetration rate as of last year, ahead of the estimated 30 percent. The Malaysian Government launched the first digital Pekan 1Malaysia programme, which is a key contributor to national economic growth and will help achieve the National Broadband Plan | | UK Broadband site BroadbandChoices has revealed that 75 percent of broadband users on unlimited packages download and upload only 20GB of content per month, and 50 percent downloaded less than 10GB per month. Even with an extremely competitive broadband market, the average uncapped broadband user could save over GBP100 per year if they opt for a cheaper service. British Telecom offers a 10GB ADSL service for GB15.99, and an unlimited ADSL service for just GBP9 more at GBP24.99. Switching to the 10GB service |
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| Microsoft is investigating another flaw in its popular Internet Explorer browser. The new vulnerability affects users running its browser on older operating systems, which could result in an unauthorised disclosure of information. In a security advisory the software giant said that even though there are currently no attacks based on the flaw it could be used for a Web-based attack. This latest flaw could affect users running Windows XP and Internet Explorer on Windows XP. Those running the browser on a | | UK psychologists have said there is a strong link between heavy internet use and depression, finding that 1.2 percent of people surveyed were "internet addicts", and many of these were depressed. The conclusions were based on 1,319 responses to an on-line questionnaire, and recruitment was via links on social networking sites. People were asked how much they used the internet and for what purposes, and were also asked a series of questions to assess whether they suffered from depression. These "internet | | Google has said that from 1 March some of its services such as Google Docs, would not work "properly" with Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a January 2010 cyber attack on the search engine. The company urges users to upgrade their browser "as soon as possible". Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following the "sophisticated and targeted" attacks, which it said originated in China. Following Google's revelations of a "sophisticated and targeted" attack where | | Search giant Google has increased its efforts to get traction for Google Voice on the iPhone by launching a new version of the Google Voice service. The new version of the application, which allows users to make cheap long-distance calls and to forward calls from a single phone number to multiple phones, among other things, can be accessed only via a phone's web browser, as opposed to applications that are downloaded directly onto a phone and installed. Back in July, Apple turned down Google's application | | Last month people were searching more than any month during the year, with Google the clear winner in the search engine stakes. ComScore release a study last week showing that 46 percent more searched were made in December 2009 than during the same period in 2008. The web tracking firm stated that people 15 years and older made 131 billion searches in December alone, an average of around 4 billion searches per day, or 29 million every minute. ComScore also indicated that United States internet users search |
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