TechCentral

Dimension Data division Internet Solutions (IS) is at an advanced stage of planning for a project that could see it investing heavily in building metropolitan Wi-Fi networks to serve business campuses and city streets in dense urban areas.

Craig Stewart, product manager for Wi-Fi at IS, says the project, which would dramatically extend the company’s involvement in the telecommunications infrastructure access business, is being scrutinised for its commercial viability. Stewart expects IS will launch a pilot network soon using specialised outdoor Wi-Fi equipment.

Six suspects, not 10 as earlier reported by Sapa, were arrested on Thursday morning at MTN’s head office near Roodepoort. The operator explains the six — two of whom were MTN contractors — are suspected to have sold new Sim cards fraudulently loaded with airtime.

The Sim cards were then sold to members of the public at “exorbitantly discounted amounts, thereby defrauding MTN”.

Public enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba has again raised the possibility of a merger between state-owned enterprises Sentech and Broadband Infraco, but says nothing is imminent. “It would be the culmination of a process,” Gigaba says.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has set down a provisional date for hearings on local-loop unbundling, the regulatory intervention that will force Telkom to open its “last mile” of copper cables to competitors in some or other form.

The hearings, the most anticipated that Icasa has held since its investigations into call termination rates — the fees operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks — will provisionally take place from 10 to 14 October, according to Pieter Grootes, the GM of the authority’s markets and competition division.

Is French telecommunications giant Orange, the mobile subsidiary of France Telecom, buying JSE-listed IT services company Business Connexion (BCX)? Three separate industry sources, none of whom is employed by either company, have told TechCentral they understand the two parties are in discussions about a deal.

Orange has long been rumoured to be sniffing around the SA market for an acquisition. A couple of years ago, it was rumoured to be interested in Cell C, though that speculation was never firmed up.

Communications minister Roy Padayachie has downplayed recent statements by his deputy, Obed Bapela, that government may seek to allow law enforcement agencies, through the courts, to get access to the records of people using the popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service.

In a strongly worded statement on Thursday, Padayachie says he aligns himself with a statement issued by justice minister Jeff Radebe, who is the coordinator of the justice cluster in government that the state has “no intention to regulate or legislate against BlackBerry encryption messenger services”.

Telkom is still keen to expand its operations elsewhere on the African continent despite the sensational failure of Multi-Links, its Nigerian business, says chairman Lazarus Zim.
He was speaking at the group’s 2011 annual general meeting of shareholders on Tuesday in Midrand.

South Africa is beginning to see the kind of data price competition that successfully lowered prices in countries like Kenya. Details have appeared this week in a report from Tech Central.

South Africa’s newest cellular network, 8ta, owned by Telkom, is upping the ante in the ongoing mobile broadband price wars by offering prepaid users a data bundle consisting of 3GB of data for R149. The bundle will be available to both existing and new 8ta prepaid customers from Sunday.