Telkom's BCX hopes revived

The long-running Telkom-Business Connexion saga took another turn yesterday, when the IT firm allowed the deadline for the proposed takeover by the telco to be extended to 15 March. Although the Competition Commission recently advised against the takeover, the Competition Tribunal does have the opportunity to overturn that decision, if it sees fit.

If it does so before 15 March, Business Connexion will be absorbed into Telkom after all, at a cost of R2.4 billion.

Monday began with an ITWeb exclusive on the awarding of the SA Revenue Service (SARS) modernisation tender. The revenue service announced that Accenture has won the R1 billion, four-year contract. Good news for Accenture, not so for GijimaAst. The embattled firm, which has reportedly lost out on numerous other contracts lately, made it to the shortlist.

Two more SARS technology contracts of similarly epic proportions should be awarded next year.

Legal online and cellphone gambling is now one step closer, as Cabinet recently approved the Draft Gambling Amendment Bill. National Gambling Board CEO Thibedi Majake says his board will license online casinos once the Bill becomes law.

It can perform at theoretical peaks of staggeringly speedy 870 billion floating point operations per second.

Dave Glazier, journalist, ITWeb

Neotel this week made arrangements for R6 billion in funding for its network - with R2 billion in bridge financing, and R4 billion in longer-term project financing. Investec, Nedbank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the Industrial Development Corporation are all involved in the financing arrangements.

It is predictable, but nonetheless good news for the second operator, as it can now start investing that money in creating better voice and data services for the nation.

Our most prolific newsmaker, Telkom, didn't have it all its way this week, as it came under fire for allegedly blocking competition in the property development telecommunications sub-sector. Atec Systems and Technologies, providing ICT solutions for new residential property developments, says when it applied for ISDN lines and ADSL feeds for one of its property developments, Telkom's legal department refused to allow the sale to take place.

It appears the fixed-line operator wants to make such deployments its way - and since this dispute began, it has launched the Property Development Connect initiative, which aims to assist property developers implement telecoms infrastructure in new property developments.

Motorola this week won a $75 million (R532 million) GSM network expansion contract with Nigerian cellular operator M-tel. The cellular infrastructure and handset device company's financials will be boosted by two lucrative contracts at the back-end of this year, as the Nigerian coup comes shortly after a sizeable deal with Vodafone Turkey.

The CSIR switched on its supercomputer this week. It aims to assist local researchers find cures for SA's most devastating diseases. It was provided to the CSIR's Meraka Institute by Intel and can perform at theoretical peaks of staggeringly speedy 870 billion floating point operations per second.

Government has set up a structure to be responsible for the implementation of national ICT policy and legislation in provinces, and align all its ICT activities across its departments and at national, provincial and local levels.

The forum, formed in line with the Information Society and Development Inter-Governmental Relations (ISAD IGR) Framework Act of 2005, will comprise 22 permanent members, and will be titled ISAD IGR Forum. This does sound quite nice. The bad news, however, is that it will be chaired by Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

Finally, CEO Elijah Mahlangu has attributed the financial problems at local IT company New Dawn Holdings to fraud by seven key ex-employees. He admits he should have been slightly more vigilant as millions of rand was funnelled through some unconventional channels, but asks all staff, customers and business partners to remain patient while he sorts out certain problems.