Getting used to Neotel vs Telkom

ITWeb was able to get some time with the "man of the moment" in the telecoms sphere, Neotel boss Ajay Pandey, at the TelecomsWorld Africa conference, in Cape Town, this week.

Pandey said he would tackle Telkom on the pricing of the international full circuit and the transparency of its end-user contracts, among other things. Importantly, Pandey noted that once Telkom`s exclusivity ends over the SAT-3 landing rights next April, Neotel will negotiate to have at least equal access to the cable.

At a supposedly high-level ICT meeting last Sunday, president Thabo Mbeki voiced his concern on the state of ADSL in the country, and explained government is waiting for the establishment of competitors in the telecoms market before lowering Internet access prices.

Neotel`s Pandey said he would tackle Telkom on the pricing of the international full circuit and the transparency of its end-user contracts.

Dave Glazier, journalist, ITWeb

However, the award for the most ill-thought out comment of the week must go to Esther Dyson, chairperson of EDventure Holdings and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council, who said: "Though there was a sense of urgency on the behalf of the government, competition must come from the customer." She advised consumers to be entrepreneurial by buying and reselling broadband.

Not content with embarrassing herself there, Dyson reappeared with the same terrible advice on Monday at iWeek 2006. At the same event, SA`s favourite IT son, Mark Shuttleworth, outlined what he believes to be "the three anchors" to an IT strategy: skills development, free and open source software, and affordable bandwidth. Some sense, at last.

The SA Revenue Service (SARS) re-issued one of its recently-scrapped tenders this week, with an exec explaining to ITWeb on Tuesday the critical differences between the previous voice and data networks tender, and the new one. Although a handful of bidders had been short-listed for the R1.5 billion contract just before it was controversially sent back to the drawing board, SARS is opening the new one up to a whole host of service providers, it seems.

Telkom revealed this week it is planning to introduce WiMax to South Africans early next year, to complement its ADSL product range expansion. CEO Papi Molotsane says trials of the technology (regarded by many in the industry as the "right way to go" in terms of broadband) have now been concluded.

To be fair, the broadband technology plans we`ve seen from the fixed-line operator in the past few weeks (considering, as well, the introduction of 4Mbps ADSL) have been impressive.

Yesterday ITWeb revealed that Marconi Communications, in the process of being re-branded to Ericsson following the latter`s buy-out of Marconi late last year, has won a large telecoms infrastructure tender from Transel.

JSE-listed bank Capitec announced this week it has introduced a mobile bank targeting the lower income bracket.

In true realisation of the "mobile workforce" notion, banking consultants use a mobile unit - a portable aluminium case that contains a notebook, mouse, 3G data card, Webcam, magnetic strip/chip card reader with a PIN pad, biometric fingerprint reader and a multifunctional laser printer. This is quite an innovative and integrated approach to using technology in business.