Author: Gugu Lourie

By Gugu Lourie A possible new mobile operator or a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) promises cellphone customers “freedom”. The unidentified company behind this operator on its Twitter page said: “Hello. Fancy a bit of freedom?” It added: “Pssst, don’t renew your mobile contract just yet, nudge nudge wink wink hint hint.” Pssst, don’t renew your mobile contract just yet, nudge nudge wink wink hint hint. pic.twitter.com/tedBYDvMzJ — Be Unordinary (@BeUnordinary) April 20, 2015 The new MVNO on its Twitter page added: “Does your large mobile bill make you feel loved?” Does your large mobile bill make you feel loved?…

South African media tycoon and self-made billionaire Koos Bekker has rejoined Naspers as a non-executive chairman. Bekker – who stepped down as CEO of Naspers early last year and succeeded by Bob van Dijk – will replace Ton Vosloo who retired from the company with  effect from 17 April 2015. Vosloo has served on the Naspers board since March 1983. He chaired Naspers for 23 years. Koos  stand down from the Naspers board for a year to allow Bob the space to settle in with both Naspers top management and the board. He remained a board member of  Tencent. As expected this month, Koos is…

By staff writer A single 1902 Veldpond, the Holy Grail of South African numismatics, was recently sold on bidorbuy for R497,000. The coin has been graded by the world renown grading service NGC as MS 64. That made this very rare coin even scarcer. It is very seldom that these coins get such a high grade, making it, according to the seller, a superb collectors’ specimen and a once in a lifetime find. The seller, known on the site under username Kp36, is no stranger to high value merchandise. In the space of the last thirty days, he sold an…

By Noah Askin and Dean Pierides Digital music downloads and online streaming sales have now overtaken sales of CDs and records for the first time, underscoring just how fundamentally the internet has changed the way we consume. The UK-based trade group the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has reported that global market revenue from digital music sales represented 46% of all sales last year, coming to $US6.85 billion. By contrast, physical sales came to $US6.82 billion. While online consumption and dissemination has certainly made things easier for many creators and consumers, the online market place can also yield monopoly…

Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has seconded Transnet CEO Brian Molefe and appointed him as the acting Eskom CEO after Tshediso Matona was suspended in March. Molefe has been in his role at Transnet since 2011 and was the Public Investment Corporation CEO from 2003 to 2010. Matona was suspended when Eskom announced it would start an independent inquiry into the state utility, which has been battling with maintenance and financial issues, resulting in load shedding. Brown said there would be clarity on the so-called deep dive inquiry into Eskom’s financial troubles on Wednesday.A company skilled in accounting and forensic…

Altech Node, which was seen by many commentators as ‘South Africa’s Netflix’, is finding it tough to compete against pay-TV operator MultiChoice and other video-on-demand (VoD) services. The performance of the Altech Node, which is owned by Altron’s TMT division, has not quite gone as planned on the market. Altron, JSE-listed telecoms group, announced on Thursday that the recently launched Altech Node has performed below expectations, with regard to retail customer take-up. “Altron TMT is well advanced in terms of exploring alternative opportunities for this business,” Altron said late on Thursday without providing additional information. One wonders whether Altron TMT…

Romeo Kumalo,  Vodacom’s chief operating officer: International Business, is leaving the mobile phone operator . Richard Boorman, Vodacom spokesperson confirmed the departure and CEO also sent out an internal memo to staff on Wednesday. “It is with regret that I announce that Romeo Kumalo, Chief Operating Officer: International Business, will be leaving the company at the end of May to join his family business,” said Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO. Joosub praised Kumalo. “I would like to thank Romeo for his contributions to Vodacom and wish him all the best for the future.” Joosub added that the mobile phone operator will announce…

Business Connexion (BCX), the JSE-listed technology group being bought by Telkom, on Thursday delivered strong earnings growth and solid cash generation, which will help it pursue more opportunities. The company reported a 25.9c diluted headline EPS in the six months ended February 2015 versus 20.7 cents in the same period in 2014. The South African-based third largest listed software and computer services group continued to generate strong cash flows of R282m in the period compared to R259m in the same time last year. The company, which has been focusing on aggressive acquisitions strategy, said as industry dynamics continue to evolve…

By Staff writer Two years ago Huawei launched the P6, the first in a series of smart, beautiful devices; today the company unveiled its two latest P Series smartphones – the Huawei P8 and the Huawei P8max. The Huawei P8max builds on the P8 design and features a larger 6.8-inch screen, longer battery life and a unique camera with light tracing for any environment. It also inherits the ID design and light painting capabilities of the P series devices. The large 4360 mAh battery features Huawei’s power saving technology and power consumption management technology that ensures outstanding battery life. With…

Huawei lights up London with Huawei P8 Smartphone launch on 15th April 2015. Watch the highly anticipated…

The Soweto Wireless User Group (SOWUG) says it will go live this month, and it is partly thanks to critical support received from Africa’s only vendor neutral data centre, Teraco. By Staff writer SOWUG is a registered Non-Profit Organisation that provides free wireless to residents of Soweto.  It forms part of a number of development projects facilitated by The Foundation for Internet Development (FID), which was formed by ZACR (formerly UniForum SA), ISPA, WAPA and ISOC-ZA to provide a mechanism for ICT industry players to make a meaningful contribution in terms of Enterprise Development, but do not have the capacity, nor…

By Christian Barry Many millions of people throughout the world will illegally download the fifth season of Game of Thrones, released today by HBO. Legally speaking, what they will be doing is a violation of intellectual property rights, or “piracy”. But will they be doing anything morally wrong? It might seem obvious that what they will do is wrong. After all, it is illegal. But there are many things that have been illegal that people don’t think are morally wrong. Same-sex relationships, divorce and many other practices that are now widely accepted as morally acceptable were once outlawed and criminally…

For immediate release 15 April 2015   MTN optimising its network To improve the coverage and quality of its network, MTN announced a R10 billion investment in capital expenditure in March earmarked for 2015. This massive investment has been allocated for infrastructure upgrades across the country in order to optimise the network and provide better service and connectivity to our customers. The network upgrades have already commenced at various regions across the country and entail, among others, the construction of new base stations, the refarming of existing voice spectrum for deployment of new generation technologies such as the…

By Daryl Blundell, General Manager at Sage Pastel Accounting Load shedding is here to stay, so every small business needs to take steps to protect its systems and data when the lights go out as well as from power surges when electricity is restored after an outage. PCs are sensitive to power cuts, power dips and power surges, so take the necessary steps to protect them. When Eskom cuts the power, you could not only lose the latest changes to the files you’re working on, your open files could become so corrupted  or damaged that you will not be able…

By Staff writer   Vox Telecom has launched CloudBackup, an online application to deliver simple, secure, local and reliable backup aimed at consumers and small businesses, at a competitive and cost effective price point. “We all know someone that has lost all of their music, photos and personal documents when their computer crashed or was stolen.  Backing up data just isn’t second nature for us – but the results of losing everything is undeniably catastrophic,” says Says Justin Elms, Senior Product Manager of Infrastructure Services. CloudBackup from Vox Telecom not only simplifies backups, by automating them, it makes the recovery of…

Government’s e-Tender portal should be up and running and will incorporate tenders from municipalities as from the 1st of July 2015. The e-Tender portal was launched on the 1st of April 2015 under the command of the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer. The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) is responsible for technical support, maintenance and hosting of the portal. In a statement announcing the project, National Treasury said the e-Tender project is linked to a broader objective of modernising the state’s Supply Chain Management which includes the establishment of a central supplier database. The e-Tender portal was described as…

If you need to secure your home and are looking for affordable quality monitoring equipment that that’s easy to set up and use both indoors and outdoors, I recommend that you get yourself a Vox Telecom Guardian Eye Lite outdoor IP camera. This Wi-Fi-enabled IP-based camera keeps an eye on your home or business via a smart device – smartphone or tablet. You will, however, need a Wi-Fi router and internet connection to activate the camera. I mounted the camera on my garage, which has a Wi-Fi network from Telkom. I was able to view the access area to my…

Mobile phone operators have increased efforts to bring internet services to the average South Africans through cheaper communication gadgets. Until now the local smartphone industry had been dominated by Android and iOS operating systems. However, smartphones that use this type of operating systems are mostly expensive – even the lower-end ones are still out of reach for  the average person. High-end models like Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge, which allow users internet connectivity, cost several thousand rand. However, there is good news. MTN has introduced cheaper Alcatel OneTouch Fire E smartphone, which is a Firefox OS-based…

By Staff writer US-based Ruckus Wireless, a global supplier of advanced wireless systems for the rapidly expanding mobile Internet infrastructure market, on Monday announced that it was expanding its presence in SA with a new office to accommodate its growing staff, providing centralised operational management and sales support of partners and customers in the sub-Saharan region. “We have been operating on the continent since November 2011 with a direct presence in South Africa for the last three years, and have grown tremendously,” said Michael Fletcher, sales director for Ruckus Wireless, sub-Saharan Africa. “The next logical step is having an office from which…

By Andy Tattersall Technology’s promise of wonderful things in the future stretches from science fiction to science fact: self-driving cars, virtual reality, smart devices such as Google Glass, and the internet of things are designed to make our lives easier and more productive. Certainly inventions of the past century such as the washing machine and combustion engine have brought leisure time to the masses. But will this trend necessarily continue? On the surface, tech that simplifies hectic modern lives seems a good idea. But we risk spending more of the time freed by these devices designed to free up our…

Computer making giant Dell has established a multi-million rands ICT training academy in South Africa, Johannesburg, in a move that fulfils part of the country’s black economic empowerment (BEE). Located in Bryanston, north of Johannesburg, Dell’s Khulisa Academy is designed to focus on developing leading high performance computing (HPC) skills, complemented by business management and entrepreneurial and life skills. The academy was approved as an equity investment programmes (EEIP) by the department of trade and industry. EEIP is a principle in the BEE codes of good practice which was inserted to accommodate multinationals who cannot facilitate black ownership. Dell joins…

For immediate release 10 April 2015 MTN introduces Samsung S6 and S6 Edge MTN revealed that the much-anticipated Samsung S6 and S6 Edge smartphones are available on its MTN SKY packages for a monthly subscription of R1899 and R1999 respectively as of 10 April 2015. The Samsung S6 and Samsung S6 Edge are available on the MTN network, and the pre-orders of these devices have been satisfactory. Both the 32GB Samsung 6 and 64GB Samsung 6 Edge are available at MTN branded retail stores, MTN Online store and MTN Direct call centres on a number of tariff plans, including on…

By Casper Mabona Vodacom has launched a voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) service in South Africa. The country’s biggest mobile phone company by subscribers claimed it is the first operator to bring such service in the country. The telco said users of VoLTE will experience faster call set up times (the amount of time it takes between dialling a number and the phone ringing at the recipient’s end), better voice quality, and additional capabilities such as being able to continue browsing the web or using apps while simultaneously making a call. VoLTE technology, which enables mobile voice traffic to be carried natively over a…

By Staff writer Cell C will invest R8 billion over the next three years to build its LTE network that will see high-speed broadband technology brought to its customers in targeted areas across the country. “Our LTE strategy will be focused and strategic, targeting metropolitan areas where people work and live. The primary commuting areas that fall outside the major metros will remain covered by HSPA+,” says Cell C CEO Jose Dos Santos. South Africa’s third mobile phone operator has signed supply agreements with both Huawei and ZTE, which are it’s primary partners in the rollout of LTE and entails…

By Susan Hopkins & Jenny Ostini  Many of us have a traditional and corporeal perspective on violence. We perceive it as physical threat: the stranger following you home on a dark night; an unprovoked assault in a bar or on an empty train; or the alcohol fuelled brawl that breaks out in the Valley in Brisbane on a Friday night. We may even think about domestic or family violence, particularly now that popular discourse increasingly recognises domestic violence as a national emergency of “epidemic” proportions. But relatively little attention has been paid to what we call “technology violence” and the…