| |
 |
|
13
March 2008 |
|
National Treasury's decision to decline funding for Infraco's West Coast undersea cable project has forced the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) to throw its lot in with the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure project, Uhurunet. In a presentation to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, the department revealed it had requested R2.09 billion over the next three... |
| |
|
|
13
March 2008 |
|
Neotel has addressed a recent series of outages on Tenet's network. The incidents included a fibre connector failure, which led to a complete service failure, as well as an overnight service failure on 6/7 March and routing instability on 11 March. The latter, Neotel says, was caused by Tenet giving it an incorrect IP address. Neotel and Internet Solutions (IS) took over the... |
| |
|
|
13
March 2008 |
|
The South African broadband market is making significant headway despite heavy regulation in the sector, says Frost & Sullivan analyst Lindsey Mc Donald. Analysis by the research firm found that, in 2006, the broadband market earned revenue of no less than $195 million (R1.5 billion at today's exchange rate). “An unclear regulatory environment is proving to be a challenge... |
| |
|
|
13
March 2008 |
|
MERGERS and acquisitions in the technology and telecoms sector will grow so intense in the coming months that Telkom will be taken over by an international operator, the CEO of MTN Network Solutions believes. There were “plenty of choices” as to which foreign operators will make a play for Telkom, said Mike Brierley, who heads the internet division of Africa’s largest mobile... |
| |
|
|
13
March 2008 |
|
The Internet Service Providers' Association of South Africa (ISPA) lodged a complaint with the Competition Commission (CC) in December 2005 against a variety of anti-competitive practices by Telkom. A number of these anti-competitive practices relate to ADSL, but the complaint also covered a lot of other issues. “We try to avoid a public perception that ADSL is the only problem ... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
It was a game of pass the buck in the government last week over who exactly was responsible for the decline of state-owned telco Sentech. Early last week, Sentech released a position paper titled The State of Sentech, in which it accused the government of failing to allocate it the funding it required to roll out its wireless broadband infrastructure network. Sentech's discontent... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
The local broadband market has grown in spite of regulatory hurdles, generating revenue of $195 million (about R1.5 billion at current rates) in 2006, according to a report by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. A major hurdle is limited and expensive bandwidth. Lindsey McDonald, a Frost & Sullivan technology analyst, said uncertainty surrounding future bandwidth availability ... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
Telecommunications regulator Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) is unlikely to meet its obligation of completing the licence conversion process by July, as mandated by law. This emerged yesterday during ICASA's briefing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, when the committee's chairman Ismail Vadi tried to pin down the regulator on whether... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
The Department of Communications (DOC) is to start a “scientific” evaluation of its performance and the impact it has had on developing the country, its officials say. DOC director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole and Greta Grabe, the DOC's COO, said they would start this year a proper means of assessment, using information gathered now as a base year. Questions were posed by the... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
Parliamentarians have labelled the Uhurunet undersea cable project as “crony capitalism”. They were also shocked to hear that, although the Department of Communications (DOC) had presented it as a done deal, Cabinet had still to approve it. This came from the briefing by a Department of Communications delegation, led by director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole, to the Parliamentary... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
SEACOM recently announced that they will launch operations in mid-2009, promising to cut the cost of international bandwidth by around 80%. This cost reduction should see far higher broadband usage limits and improved quality of service. It may also bring about improved contention ratios on broadband services like ADSL, HSDPA and iBurst. According to SEACOM the current ... |
| |
|
|
12
March 2008 |
|
Up to this point mobile broadband speeds have lagged significantly behind wired connection speeds. But Orange France has announced the launch of a 3.5 Generation (3.5G) mobile broadband service for customers in Lyon, France. The new service is said to double downlink connection speeds for users, from the current 3.6 Mbps up to a maximum of 7.2Mbps. Orange says deployment of ... |
| |
|
|
11
March 2008 |
|
Cellular giant MTN has been involved in two separate hearings at the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) in recent weeks. MTN lodged a competitor complaint against rival cellular operator Vodacom and also had a consumer complaint lodged against them by a disgruntled customer. In the Vodacom matter, MTN had lodged a complaint against Vodacom's "Summer Special... |
| |
|
|
11
March 2008 |
|
Geographic number portability (GNP) has taken a step forward, as Telkom and Neotel test systems for the implementation of block number portability. The operators are also developing an ordering system specification that will see them implement individual geographic number portability, says Telkom acting group executive for corporate communication Nabintu Petsana. Petsana could... |
| |
|
|
11
March 2008 |
|
A new USD 300 Million, 10 000 km Pacific cable is being built, promising 7 Tbps and bandwidth costs as low as USD 1 Mbps per month. According to DSL Prime, the popular telecoms newsletter from Dave Burstein, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel are building a new cable from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Burstein points out that while there is no... |
|
