iBursting into the new year

First out of the traps this year, when it comes to news at least, is iBurst - who have announced plans to invest about R350 million on new infrastructure. Currently holding 35 000 wireless broadband customers, iBurst MD Alan Knott-Craig jnr hopes the capex spend will add 50 000 to this.

With the focus in the right areas and a good marketing strategy, iBurst should be able to achieve this - given the number of people who expect the cows home before Telkom attends to their ADSL application.

Regarded as one of the worst virus strains of 2006, "Happy New Year!" malware at times accounted for about 12% of all global Internet e-mail traffic in the closing days of last year. Experts warn of a growing number of massive server-side polymorphic outbreaks in 2007, which are apparently very difficult to block, and turn computers into zombie spam slaves.

Doesn't sound too good, does it?

To go against such a successful strategy, even though the market has now matured further, is pure folly.

Dave Glazier, journalist, ITWeb

Virgin Mobile has refuted claims that it will be going back on its promise to never tie-in customers to contracts by offering free handsets with its packages. There was recently, however, a one-time promotion offering a basic Motorola free of charge if customers financed their Motorola V3 Gold handset purchase with Virgin at 0% interest.

I don't think Virgin's promise will last long. Vodacom and MTN have clearly proved that handset offers are key to getting people to buy into contracts, especially among the emerging youthful customer base, for whom handset upgrades are seen as socially-essential. To go against such a successful strategy, even though the market has now matured further, is pure folly.

Keeping to the cellular front, on Wednesday ITWeb reported on the SMS and MMS traffic statistics for the festive season - with the two big guns reflecting their numbers in different ways, making accurate comparisons difficult. Vodacom says it delivered 350 million on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. MTN, aside from connecting 1.9 billion calls, also delivered 1.2 billion SMSes in the month of December.

The SMS, once described as "the most lucrative invention" in the cellular operator industry by a local exec, is by far the most expensive form of data transfer. Money for nothing, if you have to ask me.

Rounding up the news this week was the stock exchange announcement that one of SA's biggest IT firms, Faritec, has not yet submitted its annual report. If it doesn't do so by the end of the month, it will be suspended. Looks like somebody didn't finish all their work before the Christmas break.