Business Day

MTN Swaziland this week won a court case that will result in the closure of a network launched by Swaziland Post & Telecommunications Corporation because of a conflict of interest.

MTN Swaziland is 30% owned by MTN, 19% by the Swaziland Empowerment Group, with Swaziland Post & Telecommunications originally owning the other 51% — though it claims this was transferred to Swaziland’s finance ministry (41%) and King Mswati (10%), to pave the way for its independent entry into the cellphone sector.

Shares in telecommunications group Telkom slumped R1.60 (Less than US $1) or 4.82% to R31.60 (about US $4.1) on the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) today after the group announced losses incurred by its mobile business in a trading statement.

According to I-Net Bridge, Telkom advised that its headline earnings per share from continuing operations for the six months ending September 2011 were expected to be at least 40% lower than previously. “The decrease is mainly attributable to the losses incurred by the mobile business,” Telkom said in a statement.

Mobile network, MTN Nigeria says it will invest an additional $1 billion in the current financial year, for network expansion and improvement of quality of service.

Speaking at the company’s colourful tenth anniversary celebrations in Lagos yesterday, Brett Goshen, chief executive officer, MTN Nigeria, said the telecoms firm intends to further expand upon its subscriber base which currently stands at over 40 million. Goshen said as part of the strategy to achieve this, the network would deliberately push into the underserved rural communities.

Datatec’s plans to bolster its African operations suffered a setback on Friday when Mustek 's board rejected its R101m offer to buy Comztek Holdings. Mustek, which owns 41.84% of Comztek, said its board considered the offer and "unanimously resolved to reject" it. Last month, Datatec offered R97m for Comztek and last week added R4m after completing due diligence.

Communications group MTN says its Zakhele Offer to the Black public to subscribe for approximately R1,6 billion worth of shares was oversubscribed more than 1.7 times. The offer raised approximately R2.8 billion from more than 124,000 applicants from across South Africa. In an online statement, MTN says the majority of the applications were received in the last few days and the smooth running of the process bears testament to the South African Post Office collection process.

Sentech is reviving its telecommunications wireless business with the roll-out of a new network that will cost up to R2bn, with only 25% of that being funded by taxpayers. The state-owned signal distributor failed dismally in the broadband market with its MyWireless product, which cost millions of rands before it was cancelled.

Sentech chairman Quraysh Patel said last week that the company set aside R500m two years ago for a broadband wireless network, but it failed to take off initially because of a poor business plan.

The Competition Tribunal hearing into allegations of anticompetitive behaviour by Telkom took a new twist when the fixed-line operator successfully forced Internet Solutions to withdraw one of its complaints.

Telkom argued that Internet Solutions' complaint was filed late and overlapped with a similar complaint from the tribunal's investigative arm, the Competition Commission.

Allied Electronics Corporation (Altron), a family-owned business and one of South Africa's largest electronic and electrical equipment companies, said last week the strong rand affected its exports and created stiff competition in the local market.

MWeb's unlimited internet has enabled the launch of SA's first online radio service that is targeting the tech-savvy market. 2oceansvibe Radio is aiming to change the face of radio in the country as it believes its target market is not catered for by the mainstream radio stations.

2oceansvibe was co-founded by Seth Rotherham, who four years ago hosted an internet radio talk show "for fun" via his website to test its feasibility. However, the lack of broadband and the price of internet in SA hamstrung his plans to launch a full service.

Black-owned consortium Mobile TV, which took the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to court over the mobile TV licence selection process, has been awarded a trial broadcast service licence in Gauteng to test a different technology to that being used by mobile TV licence holders MultiChoice and e.tv.