South Africa

How is 5G getting on?

With the FCC announcing the results of its latest spectrum auction, we’re having a look at how the networks and supporting ecosystems are developing around the world.

MTN mulls Telkom move – report

MTN is looking into the possibility of acquiring a majority stake in fellow South African telco Telkom in a bid to challenge the country’s dominant provider Vodacom, a Bloomberg report has claimed.

Alcatel-Lucent, Vodacom in ultra-broadband GPON project

Alcatel-Lucent has announced it will build a gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) solution for Vodacom in South Africa. The vendor claimed the solution will enable Vodacom to expand its subscriber base, and provide ‘ultra-broadband’ for bandwidth-hungry activities such as video streaming and online gaming.

South Africa’s Vodacom to acquire fixed player Neotel

The South African mobile operator subsidiary of UK-headquartered Vodafone has announced an agreement to acquire the market’s second largest fixed communications provider, Neotel, in a cash deal worth ZAR7.0bn ($673m). Negotiations between Vodacom and Neotel were announced in September last year, when Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub pledged to pump significant investment into the merged entity should talks prove fruitful.

South African mobile reseller shuts up shop

South African mobile service reseller Nashua Mobile, which trades in subscriptions for the country’s main operators, is to close operations and sell its 750,000 users to Vodacom and MTN. The company is also looking to offload its Cell C customer base to a third party.

African MVNOs should target premium customers, says Cell C

MVNOs in Africa should focus on the premium end of the market rather than offer low-cost ‘no frills’ services, according to Bjorn Florman, chief executive, wholesale business at Cell C. The South African mobile operator is one of the relatively small number of networks in the region that has wholeheartedly opened its network to MVNOs.

African LTE operator “could happily prioritise Skype traffic”

A greenfield LTE operator that has launched this year in Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda would “happily prioritise Skype traffic” at the expense of standards-based voice services if that is what the market demanded, its chief operating officer has told Telecoms.com.