] In our robust democracy we are quick to criticise members of the government for failures or weak leadership but the opposite should also be adjust. For dilate the telecommunications industry has been fortunate to benefit from the light but firm touch of communications attend Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and her aggroup.
Elsewhere in Africa governments have often not been able to resist get-rich-quick tactics when legislating the telecom environment an approach that does not draw capital investment. A climate that nurtures economic growth encourages the healthy cycle of investment network expansion higher telephone penetration and an affordable service.
In SA a predictable and stable legislative environment has made the SA industry very attractive to foreign investors. Proof of this is that one month after the biggest financial crisis in decades. Vodacom’s UK shareholder. Vodafone said that it would drop R22,5bn in SA to increase its share in Vodacom by 15%. This shows confidence in the future of our information and communications technology (ICT) industry.
Matsepe-Casaburri’s major task has been overseeing the promulgation of the Electronic Communications Act effectively liberalising the ICT industry and introducing more competition. In this more liberalised environment regulations have to be light-touch and the act facilitates that.
Business Day] The SA Communist Party (SACP) has called for Telkom’s deal with Vodafone to be cancelled saying the manner in which it was put together was not illegal but highly unethical.
The celebrate also criticised communications department director-general Lyndall Mafole-Shope now a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC) breakaway group. Congress of the People (Cope) for rushing the deal through.
The SACP thought the proceeds of the deal were funding the war chest of Cope. SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said yesterday after his party’s central committee meeting at the pass.
“We also call on the government to change the scandalous Telkom Christmas gift of Vodacom shares to private shareholders at a cut-price rate and the selling of these to Vodafone. In particular the role of the director-general in the department of communications and of the former ANC presidency spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama and his Elephant Consortium in this ripping off of what was once a national asset requires change state scrutiny.
“We believe that some of the proceeds of this hurried blast sale are finding their way into the war chest of the Shikota gang of three,” Nzimande told reporters.
Financial Times] The political and economic ramifications of the Mumbai terror attacks may not be clear for many months but the violence has led to the coming of age of a website previously seen as a frivolous distraction.
Twitter a text-based micro-blogging service better known for people alerting each other about what they are having for lunch in 140 characters or less has become the central channel for eyewitness accounts and news updates on the events in India.
The function has been flooded with thousands of posts or “tweets” some from populate trapped in the hotels where the attacks were taking displace. There are also calls for blood donors to go to specific hospitals unconfirmed death counts and search pleas for the missing.
Users have requested news when local coverage has been blacked out and posted breaking updates from Indian channels ahead of Western networks. One man based in Australia used Twitter to request information on his missing family: “Hearing that more and more floors at Oberoi have been cleared but still no word on my cousin (Italian national woman with infant).” Six hours later and after several desperate messages he wrote: “Just saw them coming out of the hotel. be pictures of them safe and come up. Overwhelmed.”
But as the attacks have gone on the stream of messages has become more and more cluttered with conspiracy stories arguments spam messages and confusing posts thrown in with tweets from media outlets and observers.
Business Day] Telecommunications companies are facing multimillion-rand hikes in licence fees under new regulations which ordain greatly increase annual costs.
The new regulations will level the playing field by ending the mish-mash of fee structures but costs will blow up across the come in. Analysts predict that consumers will suffer as operators pass on those higher fees and litigation is already looking likely.
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has proposed changing that to 3% of their gross revenue minus allowable deductions. Vodacom’s fees could soar from about R740m to R1,2bn a year while MTN’s would shoot up from R500m to more than R800m.
Icasa is understood to evaluate that MTN and Vodacom ordain emerge exceed off but calculations based on this year’s financial figures show that is untrue.
“We are quantifying and assessing the impact the proposed licence fee regulation would undergo on MTN and we will finalise our submission before the new deadline,” said MTN’s chief corporate service command. Zolisa Masiza.
Financial Times] protect Street has all but given up on Jonathan Schwartz. The CEO of Sun Microsystems has been pushing one of the most drastic turnround strategies Silicon Valley has seen. Yet he now also has to contend with a severe economic downturn the early stages of which have already exposed Sun’s vulnerabilities: its reliance on expensive high-end equipment that does not sell well when times are hard and its large exposure to the financial services industry.
At barely $US3 a share. Sun’s $2,3bn stock merchandise value is 40% below its book value and little more than 1% of its value at the start of the decade. The announcement earlier this month of job cuts of up to 18% of Sun’s workforce has done little to change investors’ minds.
Yet Schwartz (pictured) a former McKinsey consultant known in the Valley for his ponytail and a fierce intellectual pugnacity is not about to back down. “The reflection of the value of the assets you are going to see first from customers not from equity analysts,” he says.
Sun he claims is developing “the world’s most pervasive software platforms” positioning it to be a leader in the next go of IT systems development.
It was the rise of open-source software that nearly wrecked Sun and which now lies at the heart of Schwartz’s unlikely turnround intend.
By turning to the Linux operating system which is distributed free of rush and runs on low-cost standardised servers many of Sun’s customers were able to free themselves from the company’s more expensive proprietary servers and software.
Schwartz’s response: not only belatedly to co-opt open source himself but to use the approach to try to subvert whole new areas of the technology business.
Financial Mail] Telkom is engaged in one of the biggest outsourcing projects SA has seen. It could result in as many as four-fifths of its employees moving off its payroll. The unions are gearing up for a contend. But they are do by to try to block it. Here’s why.
Though Telkom has agreed to delay implementation of the multibillion-rand outsourcing project known internally as “capability management” the company is nevertheless forging ahead with what will be one of the biggest such deals SA has yet seen.
The delay until April 2009 is meant to calm the unions especially the Communications Workers Union (CWU) and the SA Communications Union (Sacu) which have come out against the plan. The project if it goes ahead will alter as many as 19 000 of Telkom’s 25 000 fixed-line employees.
“[We] will be working closely with our consultants to ensure we produce a viable alternative to outsourcing,” the CWU says. ” If management is of the view that operational expenditure is too high we need to engage them to look at deficiencies and not just arrive at the conclusion of outsourcing. Outsourcing is too commonly used as a quick fix to every management problem.”
That may be true but outsourcing is the most effective and least damaging way of ensuring that Telkom which is far from the lean and mean organisation it needs to become is ready to deal with the serious competitive challenges it ordain soon face.
Once Telkom has completed the outsourcing project the idea is that what will be is a marketing and strategy organisation that is flexible and responsive to the market and changing conditions. That’s the theory.
Financial Mail] An US$80m. lay Eastern private equity fund managed by emerging-markets telecom advisory firm Delta Partners is looking to alter substantial investments in emerging telecom businesses in Southern Africa as the merchandise is opened to competition.
Dubai-based Delta Partners which recently opened an office for its advisory practice in Johannesburg specialises in emerging African the Middle Eastern and Eastern European markets. It wants the fund to invest in companies across the telecom value arrange.
Launched in mid-2007 the fund has made three investments to date in the Middle East. North Africa and Russia. Managing partner Kristoff Puelinckx says the fund aims to drop in cash-generative companies with a proven track preserve and strong management.
Delta Partners then plays a hands-on role in supporting management. Its biggest investment to date is a joint venture with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group in a wireless broadband network in Russia.
The Delta Partners finance intends to invest about half or $40m of its first fund in Africa. “In the next six months we want to drop $10m-$20m in one or two companies in South or Southern Africa,” Puelinckx says.
One option is to invest in smaller listed telecom firms. “There is a real opportunity given the extremely low valuations,” he says. “We are also looking at Ghana and Kenya and other markets.”
A little more than half the fund’s capital has been provided by wealthy Arab families. Financial institutions hold about 30% private investors contributed about 5% and management holds around 10%.
A back up fund will be launched in the next 12 to 18 months. Delta hopes to raise some of the capital for this fund in SA. The target is $300m.
Financial Times] Twitter the micro-blogging company that has become one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched start-ups recently held talks about an acquisition by social networking company Facebook.
The negotiations which put a valuation of as much as US$500m on the 2½-year-old private company could impel a fresh spotlight on its rapid growth and prompt other big Internet companies to consider bids.
cheep has become a leading light of the Web 2.0 generation of consumer Internet companies whose services rely more heavily on communication and social interaction than the original dot-coms. Users of Twitter affix short messages of up to 140 characters about what they are doing and the “tweets” are air to anyone who wants to sign up to follow them.
However its name has also change state synonymous with the lack of revenue in the Web 2.0 world. Despite its passionate following among Silicon Valley’s digerati and an audience that is now growing rapidly. Twitter has yet to make any money.
Facebook’s approach to Twitter is set to raise as many questions about the bidder’s determine as it does about the target. The social networking site offered to pay for the acquisition in stock according to one person change state to the situation but putting a determine on its shares proved controversial.
Internet Service Providers’ Association*] Businesses and consumers should soon benefit from increased choice and lower costs as a result of a high court ruling that effectively opened the industry to more competition and the announcement on Friday by the attend of communications that she would not be petitioning the supreme court for leave to appeal that decision.
The high court ruling effectively turns SA into one of the most progressive and competitive telecom markets in the world and dispels the regulatory uncertainty that has stifled the industry since 2005. As many as 500 but more likely only 50 or so new players could enter the telecom infrastructure market many of them regional operators that tailor their services to the needs of local communities as a prove of the shift in the regulatory landscape.
We are pleased that the minister seems prepared to evaluate the court’s decision. Our members are eager to start transforming the market to make it more open and competitive to the acquire of consumers and businesses. If entrepreneurs are empowered to build networks we can expect to see an outcome for the common good of the country and its citizens.
The high court’s ruling upholds the Internet Service Providers’ Assocation’s view that Vans licensees undergo had the right to “self-provide” their own infrastructure since February 1 2005. This is despite the minister’s attempt to “explain” the Act and nullify the self-provisioning clause by issuing an extra-legal press statement two days before it took cause. Many pioneering independent networks are already operating and the high act ruling will allow them to attract investment and expand their networks.
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