Author: Gugu Lourie
South Africans are increasingly adopting online shopping as the Christmas rush puts pressure on retailers to generate a healthy bottom line in a tough economic environment. By Duncan Alfreds, NewsAgency Despite fears of credit card fraud as a significant barrier to e-commerce, data from The Foschini Group (TFG) shows that more people are migrating to online shopping. “We are seeing online stores outperforming the top offline stores, particularly @home which is trading as the number 1 store in the country, outperforming even the furniture stores,” Brent Curry, TFG chief information officer, told Fin24. A recent survey by Ipsos showed that 22%…
Absa is the second South African bank to deploy voice biometrics or recognition service to analyse and verify private banking clients based on their speech patterns and allows them to execute phone banking transactions through the bank’s call centre in a secure, smarter and quick manner. Absa Bank informed its private banking clients on its website that “a new way to bank is here. New voice-activated account technology”. It added: “The secure voice biometric technology means accessing your account has become faster (no lengthy call with consultants), smarter (authenticates your identity using the biometrics in your voice (voiceprint) to access…
Scammers are trying to steal cash from prepaid subscribers, claiming that people have used a massive amount of data on smartphones. By Duncan Alfreds, NewsAgency Some Fin24 users on prepaid mobile service have received phone calls from people claiming to represent Vodacom or MTN, and demanding payment for data bundles exceeding R2 500. But it is likely a scam. “We wish to put it on record that Vodacom will never call or SMS prepaid subscribers to demand ‘outstanding payments’ as prepaid customers use the service they’ve already paid for in advance,” Tshepo Ramodibe, Vodacom executive head of corporate affairs, told Fin24.…
Vouchers good for one, three and six month subscriptions to ShowMax have gone on sale at selected Pick n Pay stores in South Africa. This development has the dual benefit of making it possible to give ShowMax subscriptions as a gift, and also enables those without a credit card to access the service. ShowMax subscription vouchers have gone on sale at selected Pick n Pay stores in South Africa. Priced at R99, R297, and R594, these vouchers give one, three, or six months’ access to the ShowMax internet video streaming service with Africa’s largest catalogue of TV series and movies.…
South African technology firm Poynting, which manufacturer and supply antenna solutions, is planning to ship 500 000 digital TV antennas to the South African Post Office to kick-start the country’s migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television. By Staff Writer February 1, 2016 has been set as the day when analogue television broadcasting will be converted and replaced by digital television South Africa missed the June deadline, set by the International Telecommunications Union, to have all television broadcasts switched to the digital medium Poynting said on Thursday that the migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television kicked-off today with the delivery of the first shipment…
Vodacom [JSE:VOD] has rejected an attempt to attach its assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) amid a legal dispute
MTN to spend more than R1 billion ($67.5 million) in Ghana to buy a 15 year 4G/LTE licence in the 800 MHz spectrum band
The ANC on Wednesday claimed the poor attendance at the #ZumaMustFall marches was an affirmation that President Jacob Zuma’s decision to appoint Pravin Gordhan as minister of finance was generally accepted by South Africans.
MTN announced on Wednesday that its Côte d’Ivoire operation has paid 75% or CFA F 75 billion of the new telecommunications operator unified license acquisition cost to the government of Cote d’Ivoire. By Staff Writer The GSM license was to expire on 1 April 2016, after 20 years of operation. MTN was expected to pay 50% of the license cost amounting to CFAF 100 billion to the Government of Côte d’Ivoire 15 December 2015. “By paying 75%, which is above the required 50% minimum, MTN Côte d’Ivoire obtains the extension of the operating term of the unified license for 17 years, for commissioning all services and products associated to 2G / 3G / 4G / LTE and upcoming new technologies,” the operator said in a…
While the rest of the world is still waiting to re-immerse themselves in a galaxy far, far away, South Africa finds itself on the lucky end of the spectrum, with the movie being released on Wednesday. By Ahmed Areff, NewsAgency At the premiere at the Eastgate Shopping Centre on Tuesday night, Star Wars fans and local celebrities gathered to see whether director JJ Abrams’ take on the beloved franchise was worth the wait. Here are five relatively spoiler-free things you should know about the movie: 1) It has a lot of parallels with the first movie (A New Hope) Everything that…
A Cape Town teacher who cut his teeth by teaching Sunday school as a teenager has been shortlisted for the Global Teacher of the Year Award. By Tammy Petersen, NewsAgency Warren Sparrow, the head of information and communication technology at Rondebosch Boys’ Preparatory School, is one of 50 finalists in the running for what has been dubbed the Nobel Prize in teaching. “I can’t put into words what a great honour this is. I am humbled,” he said on Tuesday. READ MORE: Thanks for ‘wonderful’ teacher He celebrated with his wife over a glass of wine after recently being informed that…
On what kind of road is Zim, and are we following in her footsteps? Or are we different, more complex, resilient, less easily taken, forwards evolving where Zim by now has retreated 500 years into past medievalism and still accelerating? By Cees Bruggemans The Zim decades started off promising enough, but when people turned against their ruler they got a taste of the whip (North Korean brigades) and democratic voting mechanisms became rigged, meaning elitist kleptomaniacs took control. Life hasn’t been quite the same these three decades for the overwhelming Zim majority, who had a choice of either decamping (mostly to…
Permission has been granted for a #ZumaMustFall march in Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) said on Tuesday. By Genevieve Quintal, NewsAgency “Final arrangements will be done tomorrow [Wednesday] morning when organisers meet with representatives of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department events unit to finalise the route and exact time [of the march],” Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said. The march would start in Braamfontein and end in Newtown Park. Minnaar said the meeting between the JMPD and the organisers was expected to take place at 07:00. President Jacob Zuma is facing a backlash after he announced last week that he…
Telkom and The Walt Disney Company Africa have partnered to celebrate the release of the highly anticipated film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (in cinemas nationwide from 16 Dec) with South African consumers. From January you will start to see the advertising partnership as well as the detailed Star Wars: The Force Awakens packages exclusive to Telkom. One of the key aspects to this partnership is while the film will be available for viewing internationally from the 18th December, South Africans will be seeing it from the 16th December – one of the first countries in the world to see…
As Tshwane residents enjoy their traditional holiday at the coast, there’s a Christmas treat in store for visitors and those who remain behind. By Duncan Alfreds, NewsAgency Project Isizwe, charged with implementing the City of Tshwane’s Wi-Fi build programme, announced that from December 24 to 26, the metro will offer free uncapped internet access. “The ‘Christmas gift’ is possible due to many Tshwane residents leaving the city for holidays, reducing network load and creating an opportunity to provide users with more bandwidth at no extra cost to the city,” Alan Knott-Craig jnr of Project Isizwe told Fin24. The non-governmental organisation has…
South Africa is a water scarce country. With average annual rainfall of 450mm – compared to a global average of 870mm – the country is ranked the 30th driest in the world. One would assume that we would be more cautious when it comes to water usage and wastage and that conservation would be a priority for everyone. By Kroshlen Moodley, GM: Public Sector and Utilities at SAS Unfortunately, it’s not, and the current drought has brought this into stark focus, sparking crucial conversation about how to secure future supply to meet increasing demand. We can prevent an even bigger crisis.…
There are genuine rewards & recognitions, and then there are hospital passes. What happened to Pravin Gordhan last Sunday was a bit of both when Zuma re-offered him (as a pair of ultimate safe hands capable of damage control) the position of Finance Minister so very recently vacated by his new colleague David van Rooyen, who in turn was offered the position of minister of local government (for which he likewise wasn’t really qualified, continuing his quandary, definitely not of his making). By Cees Bruggemans Having gamely accepted, with ground rules we can only surmise, but probably quite different from what…
The holiday season can be a traumatising time for many people, but spare a thought (or retweet) for those who strive to be a part of the cultural zeitgeist at the expense of all sanity and reason. By Luke Butcher For these individuals, fear can be an incapacitating emotion caused not by spiders (arachnophobia), the colour white (leukophobia), or a fear of the numbers 666 (hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia), but rather a fear of missing out (FoMO). Scholars consider FoMO a pervasive apprehension that one is absent for the rewarding experiences of others, and is characterised by a desire for continual connection with what…
Email phishing attacks are especially popular over the festive season, partly because there’s an increase in email marketing and special offers linked to the holidays. By Rika Butler and Martin Butler During the fourth quarter of 2014, for instance, the number of unique phishing attacks globally went up by 18% compared with the third quarter that year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. A total of 437 brands were targeted and 46,824 unique phishing websites were reported, the majority of them hosted in the US. The most-targeted industries for phishing attacks are retail/service, financial services and payment services. It seems that during the…
Liquid Sea, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liquid Telecom, has started a project to build a new subsea cable linking Africa to the Middle East with onwards connectivity to Europe. By Gugu Lourie Liquid Sea will run approximately 10,000km from South Africa to the Middle East. It will be connected to Liquid Telecom’s pan-African terrestrial network, enabling a reliable and affordable international connectivity service to landlocked and coastal countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The project is already fully funded and it is estimated that it will take 2 years to complete. Liquid Sea will offer speeds of 20-30Tbps, up…
President Jacob Zuma signed the Criminal Matters Amendment Act, 2015 into law on Monday, the presidency said, a move that spells bad news for cable and scrap metal thieves. By Genevieve Quintal, NewsAgency The act amends the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 and introduces harsher sentences for the destruction of essential infrastructure and more stringent bail conditions and applications for perpetrators. “The amendments provide for changes to the law pertaining to infrastructure-related offences by making stricter provisions for the granting of bail, the sentencing of offenders and creating a new offence to criminalise damage to, tampering with or destruction of essential infrastructure…
MTN SA Foundation has today opened the new state-of-the-art ICT and life skills centre in the Velokhaya Life Cycling Academy in Khayelitsha, following the sod-turning ceremony that was held in July this year.
South African-based mobile phone giant MTN has become the latest operator to join Telefónica’s partnership programme, which aims to pool resources, expertise and access markets to compete globally in the changing telecommunications industry.
President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet has denied claims that it secretly approved the start of the nuclear procurement programme during its meeting just before Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene was fired last Wednesday.
Applications are open for the next batch of 500 Startups companies, and home cleaning platform SweepSouth, which has just returned from its four-month programme in San Francisco, believes that more local entrepreneurs should be taking up the chance.