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16
Aug 2010 |
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Outgoing Telkom chief financial officer Peter Nelson has offloaded more of the shares he holds in the JSE-listed telecommunications group, less than two months before he is due to leave its employ. Telkom announced late on Friday that Nelson had sold nearly 40 000 shares worth more than R1,3m. He sold the shares last Thursday. The latest sale of shares come just weeks after Nelson sold R1,8m worth of Telkom shares in the open market. That sale came days after he had announced he would be stepping down ... |
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16
Aug 2010 |
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Cell C's much-hyped appointment of comedian Trevor Noah as its "customer experience officer" - a nattily dressed consumer champion who's inviting the network's subscribers to tell him about their issues - got me thinking. The network would have us believe that it hit upon this idea after spotting a clip of Noah lambasting the cellphone industry's bad service - particularly Cell C's - online. Here's the thing. For 12 years, I've been publicly exposing big companies' service lapses, but I've yet to be offer... |
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16
Aug 2010 |
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South Africans once regarded Neotel as having the real potential to offer a competitive alternative to Telkom in residential services. But as the company releases an uninspired prepaid retail offering this month, that dream already appears to have faded. To remain relevant in SA's new telecommunications landscape, operators have to step up their game and release products with a strong competitive edge. Neotel's overly cautious approach to the market - its prepaid offerings come at least six months after... |
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16
Aug 2010 |
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Telecommunications group MTN expects its basic headline earnings a share (HEPS) for the first half of this year to be between 1,5 percent and 6,5 percent higher than that of the first half of 2009. Adjusted HEPS were expected to be between 18,1 percent and 23,1 percent higher than that of the first six months of last year, while attributable earnings a share for the six months were likely to be between 4,8 percent and 9,8 percent higher than the year before. In the six months ended June 30, 2009, the... |
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13
Aug 2010 |
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Telkom "Telkom is enhancing its ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) network to support ADSL speeds of up to 10Mbps (megabits per second)," the communications service provider said in a statement on Friday. The speed upgrade would apply "in all areas which have suitable technology at exchanges to support" it, and would come at no additional cost to customers. "The 10Mbps ADSL speed is an innovative enhancement to the existing fastest ADSL product, which now allows users to potentially burst at 10Mbps... |
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12
Aug 2010 |
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In a ruling made on 3 August 2010 the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) said that Vodacom couldn't provide sufficient proof that their network may be called 'broadband.' South Africa's recently released national broadband policy pins the country's definition of broadband on that of the International Telecommunications Unions (ITU) which states it must provide a minimum of 256 kbps (or 32 KBps). The complainant argued that Vodacom couldn't advertise that they were providing a broadband... |
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12
Aug 2010 |
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Government's telecommunications infrastructure business Broadband Infraco will be ready for commercial launch in a few weeks, says CEO Dave Smith. Smith says that after years of putting together a national fibre network, testing with the other telecoms providers has begun. He says Infraco has installed 12 000km of fibre connecting networks in the metropolitan areas and is now building open points of presence that will allow easy connection between telecoms players. He says government has mandated Infraco... |
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12
Aug 2010 |
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The cost of communication is still too high in South Africa and is mainly due to a lack of competition in the market, says Steve Song of the Shuttleworth Foundation. While he acknowledged at the Tech4Africa conference that the cost of internet connectivity has declined significantly in the last year, he lamented that cost of voice communication, even suggesting that it's gone up. "You know the cost of communication is still too high and we need to drive it down. Some people may say I'm not doing such a... |
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11
Aug 2010 |
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Telecommunications company Neotel has unveiled its first prepaid offering, announcing on Wednesday that it would charge 20c/minute for ad-hoc prepaid data and 50c/minute for calls to Telkom and other Neotel numbers. Neotel is "soft launching" its first prepaid product this month in the hope of improving its poor performance in the retail consumer market, where it has signed up fewer than 50 000 paying customers. The company, licensed four years ago as the first fixed-line rival to incumbent Telkom, has... |
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10
Aug 2010 |
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In March next year the special rights attached to the Telkom 'A' share owned by the government "will fall away and the company shall be subjected to the full JSE regulatory environment", the telecoms provider told Business Report on Friday. John Burke, the head of the JSE's listings division, said earlier that the government had not applied to the JSE for an extension of the rights. "Obviously, if they did make such an application, we would have to consider whatever arguments they put forward, but it is... |
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10
Aug 2010 |
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SA's broadband market is in for a shake-up with the arrival of the East African Cable Submarine System (Eassy), which brings with it industry competition and customer choice, say industry insiders. The 10 000km undersea cable will deliver broadband capacity of up to 3.84Tbps and will connect SA with eight other African countries, offering transit connectivity through backhaul networks into at least 12 landlocked countries. Eassy is SA's third undersea cable offering international broadband and is set to... |
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6
Aug 2010 |
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Cell C's plan to sell its network of base stations should be concluded within the next four weeks, says CEO Lars Reichelt. In March, TechCentral broke the news that SA's smallest mobile operator was considering selling parts of its base station network, and then leasing that infrastructure back from the winning bidder. Reichelt confirmed earlier this year that the company was in discussions with three bidders. Two companies believed to be in the running were Eaton Telecom and American Tower Corp. In... |
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6
Aug 2010 |
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A Cyprus-registered company is suing Vodacom for more than USD40-million (R290-million), alleging that the cellphone giant failed to pay it for organising shareholders' meetings. In court papers, Namemco Energy claims that Vodacom International breached its contract when it refused to pay a 5 percent commission-based consultancy fee. Namemco said it mediated negotiations between Vodacom International and Congolese Wireless Networks when the cellular giant wanted to buy the 49 percent shares that CWN holds... |
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6
Aug 2010 |
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SAs mobile operators are upset over the growing delays they face in having environmental impact assessments concluded for the construction of new base stations. They say itҒs holding back the sector. Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt used a media briefing earlier this week to criticise municipal bureaucrats for the lengthy delays. "This is one of the slowest things youve ever seen," he told journalists. "ItҒs easier to build a base station in downtown Zurich, in a 300-year-old building, than it is to build a... |
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6
Aug 2010 |
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Trade unions and industry insiders have slammed the Department of Communications' (DOC) proposed Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) Amendment Bill, criticising its constitutionality and threat to the authority's independence. At first glance, it seems the DOC has positioned the Bill to include proposals to ensure that ICASA operates more efficiently. But industry has analysed and objected to proposed clauses that will effectively make ICASA an extension of the DOC, instead of an efficient... |
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