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1
Sept 2010 |
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In a surprising move, MWeb is lobbying government to give Telkom the more than R1bn in cash stashed away in the universal service fund so that it can plough that money into upgrading its network. CEO Rudi Jansen is especially keen for the money to be used to upgrade the so-called last mile of copper cables that connect customers to Telkom's network. He says the network has fallen into disrepair and needs work if it's to be used to deliver the next-generation of broadband applications over fixed lines.... |
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31
Aug 2010 |
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Telkom is losing fixed-line customers at a faster rate in comparison to previous years, according to Business Monitor International's (BMI) latest report on SA's telecommunications sector. In its fourth quarter report on the local telecoms market, industrial research group BMI envisages a total decline of 3 percent in landline usage. The research group says SA incumbent Telkom, in its results for the financial year ending 31 March, reported a decline in demand for prepaid PSTN lines.
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31
Aug 2010 |
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Third mobile operator Cell C will unveil its 4Gs network on Friday, 3 September; however, the company is mum about which city will be first to receive access to the network. Speaking at a press conference last month, Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt explained that the company's 4Gs ['s' stands for speed and service] would be rolled out city-by-city, in six cities across SA. The operator has committed to 34 percent coverage of the South African population by the end of the year and 67 percent population coverage ... |
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26
Aug 2010 |
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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. The one-line statement will read: "MTN will launch iPhone 4, the thinnest... |
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26
Aug 2010 |
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For a man thrown in at the deep end and in an acting position, Jeffrey Hedberg looks more than comfortable in the Telkom hot seat - though it might be just temporary. Pulled out of Nigeria, where he was placed last year to sort out Telkom's troubled subsidiary Multi-Links, the former Cell C boss has to take over a difficult spot left behind by Reuben September, who opted for early retirement in June this year. Perhaps Hedberg would have already made some headway in sorting out the mess at Telkom had he be... |
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26
Aug 2010 |
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Fixed-line operator Telkom has installed company veteran Deon Fredericks as its acting chief financial officer, as Peter Nelson has left the company earlier than expected. Nelson, appointed as Telkom CFO in November 2008, unexpectedly announced his resignation in July. His resignation notice period was originally due to end on 9 October but it has now been revealed he has left the company with immediate effect. The CFO's resignation, for which no explanation was offered by Telkom, came shortly after the... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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A month before Jeff Molobela took over as chairman from Shirley Arnold at Telkom in November last year, he started meeting the 12 board members individually. The meetings were lengthy enough for the board members to raise concern about two albatrosses - the launch of its mobile service and its loss-making Nigerian subsidiary Multi-Links "It (Multi-Links) could sink Telkom," he was told. They were right. It has emerged that Multi-Links made a loss of R659-million in the latest financial year, and is still... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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On the fourth anniversary of its operations in South Africa, telecommunications network operator Neotel has snubbed consumers, saying it has little interest in anything other than corporate and middle-sized companies as well as its wholesale customers. The company was awarded South Africa's second network operator (SNO) licence in 2005 with a firm mandate to tackle the monopoly of incumbent network Telkom. Since then the market has been effectively deregulated in terms of network licences, but Neotel's lic... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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Converged communications network operator Neotel was spending close to R1-billion in capital expenditure on its infrastructure roll out in the financial year to end March 2011, CEO Ajay Pandey said on Wednesday. Speaking at a media briefing in Johannesburg, he noted that this was part of the R7,5-billion in funding that it had raised by December 2008 for its infrastructure roll out plans. Further, he noted that the company was on track in terms of its growth expectations. Pandey noted that it took, on... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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Neotel is playing down the importance of the retail consumer market to its business, saying its main focus into the future will be on the corporate and wholesale markets. This is after the company signed up fewer than 50 000 retail subscribers. CEO Ajay Pandey says Neotel's ideal revenue mix is 10 percent from its retail consumer business, 30 percent from the wholesale business and 60 percent from the enterprise space. It does not plan to exit the retail market. "The consumer play is very small for us," ... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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The West African Cable System (WACS), the submarine cable system that will connect South Africa and a number of African countries with Europe by the end of next year, would be extended from Portugal to the UK, technology provider Alcatel-Lucent has said. The technology provider reported that the new section would span 2 000 km and would increase the overall design capacity of the WACS to 5,12 Tb/s, up from the previously planned 3,8 Tb/s. "This extension follows the recent successful field trial with... |
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25
Aug 2010 |
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The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) said on Wednesday that it had not yet imposed any penalties on SA mobile firms for poor network standards, more than a year after introducing regulations which included hefty fines for connectivity failures. Icasa released the final version of its End-User and Subscriber Service Charter regulations at the end of July 2009, which then came into effect in August. Mobile communications companies would be subjected to a R500 000 fine for poor network... |
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24
Aug 2010 |
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Telkom drew heavy fire from an investment manager and a shareholder at its annual general meeting. The two men accused the JSE-listed telecommunications group of poor corporate governance. Shareholder activist Theo Botha accused Telkom of failing to comply with various elements of the new King 3 codes of corporate governance. And David Couldridge, investment analyst at Element Investment Managers, took nonexecutive chairman Jeff Molobela to task over government's special rights in the group, accusing it... |
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24
Aug 2010 |
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Picture South Africa as an internet utopia, swimming in bandwidth and free of red tape. It seems too good to be true, doesn't it? But what's to stop us from imagining? We won't have to pay for voice line rental, nor would we have to pay an exorbitant amount for ADSL line rental, because local-loop-unbundling would finally happen. In this perfect world, Telkom would be no more, with ISPs and international corporations purchasing a piece of the pie. Users would be pushing ADSL speeds to the limit, but that... |
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24
Aug 2010 |
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MWeb's uncapped broadband products have hammered the margins of many local Internet service providers, says BMI-TechKnowledge director of research Brian Neilson. And some might not survive. Speaking at a BMI-T telecommunications briefing in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning, Neilson said the uncapped model, and the price war it sparked had turned broadband provision into a volumes game. Naspers-owned MWeb surprised the market in March when it released SA's first relatively affordable uncapped Internet offer... |
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