Tag Archives: South Africa
Wi-Fi losing out to 3G in South Africa
Commercial WiFi hotspots face a dim future in South Africa – at least among corporate workers on the move, a new research study by World Wide Worx reveals. The report shows that the corporate use of WiFi – small networks that allow wireless access to the Internet – has fallen back after a steady rise [...]
Seacom laying Africa undersea cable
Mauritius-based private equity venture Seacom has started the construction of a fibre optic cable that will link southern and east Africa with India and Europe. The $650 million project covers more than 15,000 kilometres to link South Africa to India and France through Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya and Tanzania. It is expected to provide first [...]
Cell Phones Double as e-wallets in RP
Cell phones double as electronic wallets in RP By Oliver Teves Associated Press Last updated 10:42am (Mla time) 09/30/2007 Philippine Daily Inquirer SAN MIGUEL, Philippines–It’s Thursday, so 18-year-old Dennis Tiangco is off to a bank to collect his weekly allowance, zapped by his mother–who’s working in Hong Kong–to his electronic wallet: his cell phone. Sauntering [...]
Mobile money in the Philippines
Cell phones double as electronic wallets – Yahoo! News Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts. The system is [...]
Reflections on the response to the false tsunami warnings on September 12, 2007
Chanuka Wattegama who authored the primer on the use of ICTs in disaster mitigation for the UNDP looks at the responses of littoral nations from South Africa to Thailand to the Bengkulu event. Nation special If the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was a disaster marked by inaction, what happened on September 12, 2007 was marked [...]
Telkom Kenya attracts 7 bidders
India’s MTNL, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications along with France Telecom, South Africa’s Telkom, British Telecom and Kuwait’s Alkazar are vying for a 51 per cent controlling share of Kenya’s sole provider of fixed line services. In Nairobi last week the plan to privatise Telkom Kenya was presented in detail at a two-day government-inspired and [...]
Senegal telecenters going out of business
For World Telecom and Information Society Day, I wrote a column on the wrong-headed telecenter policy being implemented by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka with World Bank funds, where I referred to lessons from South Africa that were taken into account in the design, but ignored in the implementation. Here are some more lessons [...]
South Africa’s intrusive new mobile legislation
Tourists, businessmen and other travellers that might want to use their GSM handsets to roam around South Africa will henceforth face some intrusive bureaucracy before they can call home to enthuse about the delights of Cape Town or send pictures of the elephants and lions they see on safari. A new piece of legislation, the [...]
Following successful course, LIRNEasia plans regular offerings; next course in March 2008 in Singapore
Report on the 11th LIRNE.NET Executive Training Course on Regulation, 25 February – 3 March 2007, conducted by LIRNEasia and CONNECTasia Forum Pte.Ltd. Rohan Samarajiva, Course Director The 11th LIRNE.NET course on “Telecom Reform: Strategies to achieve connectivity and convergence,” was held February 25th – March 3rd, 2007 at the Changi Village Hotel, Singapore. It [...]
2006 South African ICT Sector Performance Review
LINK Public Policy Research Paper No. 8 January 2007 (pre-publication) Steve Esselaar & Alison Gillwald Despite the continued overall growth of the telecommunications sector in South Africa, the full potential of ICT to contribute to the growth and development of the country is not being realised. The fourth South African ICT Sector Performance Review (SPR) [...]
Uganda: Banking on Infrastructure
The Ugandan government gave full power to the country’s telecoms regulator, the Ugandan Communications Commission (UCC), to liberalize the infrastructure sector in October 2006. Earlier in the year, the Ministry published guidelines defining the opening up of services to full competition. This was a result of the end of the five-year exclusivity period of the [...]
Mobile multiple play
Just returned from the sensory overload of the ITU Telecom World exhibition and forum in Hong Kong. One of the buzzwords/phrases floating around this year is multiple play. Triple play is passe though a few are hanging on with quadruple play. Given my recent column in LBO, my mind was on payments. Where in the [...]
Build it, but will they come?
Maldives is a country with a population of around 300,000, around 32,000 fixed phones and around 232,000 mobiles [this has to level off, because pretty much the entire population is now using mobiles]. It has a lot of high-end hotel rooms, but the USP of the tourist industry there is not business travel, it is [...]
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