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18
Sept 2008 |
There is major potential for growth in Zimbabwe's telecommunications sector, says locally-based market research company Interfin Securities.
Zimbabwean economists say the local mobile market has a 9% penetration rate, which is considerably lower than the Southern African average of 78.5%.
"Mobile penetration has only reached 9% in Zimbabwe in the last 10 years," says Interfin Securities head of research Farai Dyirakumundu. "Our high tariffs are also unattractive for foreign investors. But that should ... |
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18
Sept 2008 |
Mobile telephone charges are expected to come down with the unveiling of Telkom Kenya’s new services.
Telkom Kenya on Wednesday launched its new commercial brand, Orange, to offer mobile phone, Internet and wireless services.
“This is an important point in Telkom Kenya’s growth plan,” chief executive Dominique Saint Jean said.
Its debut in the mobile service market is set to usher in a new round of price wars after setting the lowest charges of Sh14 per minute for calls outside its network and Sh7 ... |
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17
Sept 2008 |
Sky appears to have altered the fair use policy of its broadband package to make the Max service actually 'unlimited', as the company celebrates an impressive showing in Broadband Choices survey.
The Register has unearthed a post on SkyUser.co.uk that points out the change, which brings the company into line with competitor Virgin Media.
Virgin operates traffic management at peak times for the top percentage of downloaders, but do not have a cap on usage, something that Sky has apparently moved toward... |
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15
Sept 2008 |
If you're reading this in Africa, you're one of a few who can. With just 50 million web users across the continent, as few as 5% of Africans access the Internet, a rate far lower than in Asia, Europe or the Americas. In only a handful of African countries do more than 1% of the population use broadband services. (Among OECD countries, broadband penetration averages 18%.) And those services that exist don't come cheap. Broadband costs more in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world: consumers in t... |
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14
Sept 2008 |
Mobile phone operator Cellcom (CEL.TA) (CEL.N) on Sunday launched a new advertising model in Israel enabling subscribers to accumulate free air time in exchange for watching commercials.
"Cellular phone advertising will happen in the end and it will be big," Cellcom Chief Executive Officer Amos Shapira told a news conference.
Cellcom, Israel's largest mobile phone operator with 3.1 million subscribers at the end of June, will award customers up to 45 minutes per month of free air time for watching the... |
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12
Sept 2008 |
Ahead of a report which is expected to say the government will not fund a fibre rollout, the UK has ranked poorly in a global broadband quality survey.
The UK does not have good enough broadband to consistently deliver high quality web access, falling behind not only the usual leaders, but coming in the bottom half of a ranking in a study by Cisco.
The survey – conducted on behalf of Cisco by the universities of Oxford and Oviedo – showed Japan still leads the global chart, followed by Sweden and the ... |
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12
Sept 2008 |
Construction has begun on the US$200 million New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) undersea cable network that is expected to connect Africa to the rest of the world by 2010.
The cable, dubbed "UHURUNET" (meaning "freedom"), will run under the Indian Ocean to bring less expensive, high-speed, high quality and reliable communication to a region that still relies on satellite. As Africa's longest and most expensive cable, it will have a capacity of 3.84T bps (bits per second).
Read the latest W... |
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12
Sept 2008 |
TDS Telecom, a telco with 3,500 employees and a presence in 30 states, is suing the town of Monticello, Minnesota, for trying to put in a fiber optic network of its own. Why would a company try to prevent a town from building itself a faster network? TDS tells us that it's really just looking out for the taxpayer (and its own infrastructure investment).
Not satisfied with the current DSL and cable offerings, Monticello hatched an ambitious plan to wire up its entire town with fiber, build an interconnect... |
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11
Sept 2008 |
A former Verizon technician racked up $220,000 in phone-sex calls by tapping into the land lines of nearly 950 customers, authorities charged on Tuesday.
Joseph Vaccarelli, 45, of Nutley, made approximately 5,000 calls, resulting in 45,000 minutes of call time, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said in a news release.
Vaccarelli placed the calls in about 30 municipalities in Bergen County, according to the release.
Verizon estimated that out of a 40-week period, Vaccarelli spent 15 weeks t... |
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11
Sept 2008 |
Ofcom chief Ed Richards says regulator will look at overseas mobile market models to offer UK consumers a better deal
Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards (pictured) said the industry body would look to either remove or adapt regulation following the conclusion of its latest consultation.
In addition it will look at alternate mobile market models, assessing whether they provide a better customer experience than the current UK model. It will also look at ways to extend mobile coverage across the country.
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10
Sept 2008 |
The top four wireless providers in the U.S. are being asked by a senior senator to account for their text-messaging prices.
Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wis.), who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, sent letters Tuesday to Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint-Nextel Corp., and T-Mobile USA, noting that text-messaging prices have increased 100% since 2005.
"What is particularly alarming about this industrywide rate increase is that it does not appear to be justified by rising costs in de... |
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9
Sept 2008 |
The search giant has filed a patent for a "floating data center" that uses wave motion to power on-board computers and the ocean's water to cool them.
The patent was submitted in February last year but was spotted in the U.S. Patent & Trademark office's electronic filings and posted at Slashdot on Saturday.
The system Google engineers sketch out is a self-powered data center placed three to seven miles offshore, potentially operating off the grid. Standard shipping containers would house racks of comp... |
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9
Sept 2008 |
Under pressure from European regulators, Google is halving the amount of time its stores Internet Protocol addresses.
In a blog post, Google said it would keep IP addresses on its server logs for 9 months before anonymizing them, down from the 18 months it had previously stored the data.
A European Commission advisory body issued an opinion paper earlier this year urging search engines to delete data collected about their users after six months.
At the time, Google said the proposals could have... |
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9
Sept 2008 |
AT&T this week is launching U-verse Total Home DVR, which will let customers play back standard- and high-definition recorded programs on any TV connected to the telco’s set-top boxes in the home.
Initially, the feature—available at no extra cost to U-verse TV subscribers—is available only to customers in San Francisco. AT&T said it plans to roll out whole-home DVR to all U-verse TV customers by the end of 2008.
Using the whole-home DVR feature, customers can access, play, pause, rewind and fast-forwa... |
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9
Sept 2008 |
What Japan lacks in geographic size, it more than makes up for in Internet attack traffic.
Japan accounted for 30% of all attack traffic monitored worldwide for the second quarter of 2008, according to a new study issued by content delivery network provider Akamai. The study, which was conducted by monitoring Akamai's global network of more than 30,000 servers, measured distributed denial-of-service attacks, Web site hacking attempts and DNS hijackings for 139 countries around the world. The United State... |
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