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Top stories South Africa: Icasa delays mobile TV policy South Africa: Mobile penetration increases steadily South Africa: Court rules on free networks SOUTH AFRICA: Internet providers lose out on licences SOUTH AFRICA: Industry furious after blunder over Telkom KENYA: Competition could lower mobile costs in Kenya KENYA: Infrastructure merchants get go ahead SOUTH AFRICA: Shuttleworth launches telecoms advocacy focus KENYA: Nokia tackles e-waste

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 South Africa: Icasa delays mobile TV policy
26/02/2009 (MyBroadband.co.za) -- The Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) unexpectedly withdrew an invitation to apply for mobile TV licences recently. |

 South Africa: Mobile penetration increases steadily
17/02/2009 (MyBroadband.co.za) -- Cellphone penetration in South Africa has gone up, but average spending has continued to dwindle as a result of various pressures on consumers. According to the latest figures from the South African Advertising Research Foundation, 67% of adults in the country have cellphones. This was up from the previous survey, which showed that 60.5% of South Africa had cellphones. |

 South Africa: Court rules on free networks
02/09/2008 (The Weekender) -- A landmark ruling set to shake up the telecommunications sector has been issued by a South African high court. The ruling effectively ends the incumbent Telkom’s lingering monopoly by decreeing that technology company Altech has the right to build its own network. |

 SOUTH AFRICA: Internet providers lose out on licences
07/07/2008 (mybroadband.co.za) -- Technology companies hoping to win a licence to build their own voice and data networks have been snubbed by the regulatory authority - they will still be forced to lease their bandwidth from the incumbent telecoms operators. |

 SOUTH AFRICA: Industry furious after blunder over Telkom
02/07/2008 (mybroadband.co.za) -- Telkom SA has avoided a punishing R3,7 billion fine for anticompetitive behaviour after a high court ruled that the Competition Commission cannot refer a complaint against the operator to the Competition Tribunal. |

 KENYA: Competition could lower mobile costs in Kenya
09/06/2008 (Computerworld Africa) -- Kenyan mobile-phone users are hoping the market entry of a new provider, Econet Wireless, will offer competition and lower the prices of phone calls. The current GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] service providers, Safaricom and Celtel, are demonstrating duopolistic tendencies, with each refusing to lower cross-network call charges. Calls within the networks remain relatively cheap compared to calls from one network to the other. |

 KENYA: Infrastructure merchants get go ahead
24/04/2008 (Computerworld Africa) -- Faced with rising infrastructure costs, the Kenyan government is set to issue licences to companies dedicated to building telecom infrastructure. The move is expected to lower the infrastructure costs for telecom operators - especially new entrants. |

 SOUTH AFRICA: Shuttleworth launches telecoms advocacy focus
04/03/2008 -- Improving access to telecommunications in South Africa is as much a policy challenge and it is a technical challenge. This is according to The Shuttleworth Foundation’s Steve Song who was speaking at the launch of the foundation’s four new focus areas, one of them being telecoms. Song said there are three key areas of telecommunications focus for the foundation: the democratisation of telecommunications, connected cities and policy issues. |

 KENYA: Nokia tackles e-waste
21/01/2008 (eWasteguide.info) -- Leading mobile phone handset maker, Nokia, has announced it will set up waste dumping centres across East Africa to reprocess old mobile phone waste, including batteries. |

 South Africa: Neotel to scoop bandwidth boon
18/03/2009 (Mybroadband.co.za) -- The country's second national operator, Neotel, has become the anchor tenant on the broadband marine cable Seacom. The fledgling operator is now poised to deliver vast quantities of cheaper bandwidth to South Africa. |

 Access to internet highlighted by new global report
12/03/2009 (APC) -- How do we ensure access to the internet is a human right enjoyed by everyone? This is one of the critical questions asked by an annual publication that highlights the importance of people’s access to ICT infrastructure – and where and how countries are getting it right or wrong, and what can be done about it. |

 South Africa: National broadcast slammed again
11/03/2009 (Mybroadband.co.za) -- THE SABC has again been criticised in a report on corporate governance prepared by Deloitte & Touche for Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. The report says there is a lack of accountability at the broadcaster. |

 South Africa: Acces boom full steam ahead
11/03/2009 (Mybroadband.co.za) -- South Africa is set for an access boom. That's according to industry analysts who suggest that last year’s court case between the Department of Communications and Altech, which allowed local network operators and smaller businesses to roll out their own networks, combined with the imminent landing of the SEACOM sub-marine cable on South Africa’s East Coast has set the scene for a major shift in the local access landscape. |

 South Africa: Corporate governance and ICTs
11/03/2009 (Mybroadband.co.za) -- A draft of the Third King Report on Corporate Governance (King III) has been released for public comment. Unlike previous reports, King III deals with ICT governance in detail for the first time. However, some lawyers are not impressed. |

 South Africa: Icasa delays mobile TV policy
26/02/2009 (MyBroadband.co.za) -- The Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) unexpectedly withdrew an invitation to apply for mobile TV licences recently. |

 South Africa: Mobile penetration increases steadily
17/02/2009 (MyBroadband.co.za) -- Cellphone penetration in South Africa has gone up, but average spending has continued to dwindle as a result of various pressures on consumers. According to the latest figures from the South African Advertising Research Foundation, 67% of adults in the country have cellphones. This was up from the previous survey, which showed that 60.5% of South Africa had cellphones. |

 Broadband "glut" predicted in Africa
16/02/2009 -- Industry pundits argue that it's unlikely that all the fibre-optic cables planned for Africa are going to succeed. And, perhaps for the first time, projections of a "capacity glut" are being made. |

 Senegal: Linking up through technology
12/02/2009 (APC) -- Seven women and thirteen men from Anglophone and Francophone Africa and the Caribbean met during the last days of September in Gorée Island, Senegal. They have many things in common, but one in particular is their ability to make innovative connections between gender, agriculture and ICTs. This ability has led them to be finalists of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund... |

 Mobile(ising) Africa
12/02/2009 (Balancing Act) -- Three hundred and eighty people gathered from all over the world in Johannesburg recently to discuss how mobile phones might be used for social and political purposes in developing countries. The topic clearly touched a nerve, writes Russell Southwood. |

 IGF gets under way in India
12/01/2009 (KICTANeT) -- The First East African Internet Governance Forum was inspired by the realization that there was a need to address the limited participation of African stakeholders in global internet governance debates. That's according to KICTANeT's Alice Wanjira, who was speaking at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) currently taking place in India. |

 East Africa prepares for global IGF
26/12/2008 (Computerworld) -- Representatives from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have gathered in Nairobi to discuss common issues regarding internet governance, in preparation for next month's global Internet Governance Forum (IGF). |

 South Africa: Nothing new with Neotel
01/11/2008 (Mybroadband.co.za) -- Businesses are complaining that South Africa's second national operator is not promising much - at least right now. |

 South Africa: Where to now with universal access?
01/11/2008 (SANGONeT) -- In recent weeks the CEOs of two national development agencies in South Africa, the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) and Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA), were fired or suspended for incompetence or misconduct. These incidents raise serious questions about the integrity and intent of the people entrusted with guiding development efforts in the country, writes SANGONeT Director David Barnard. |

 Nepad e-schools on the blink
30/10/2008 (MyBroadband.co.za) -- The e-schools satellite learning programme, run by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), has linked less than 100 schools in Africa to the internet. That's after promising to connect some 600,000 schools on the continent in 2003.
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 TIGA awards for ICT and government delivery
30/09/2008 (UNECA) -- The Economic Commission for Africa and the the Canadian Fund for Africa have launched the Second Technology in Government in Africa (TIGA) Awards. The awards aim to recognise the work of African governments in the effective use of ICTs for public service delivery. |

 South Africa: Citizen journalism under the spotlight
16/09/2008 (Highway Africa) -- More than 700 journalists from over 40 African countries were expected to attend the 12th Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown, South Africa. The conference is the world's biggest gathering for African journalists and took place on 8 - 10 September. This year's theme was citizen journalism. |

 Google edges into Africa
16/09/2008 (BBC) -- Google is helping develop a system to bring high-speed internet connections to three billion people in developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. The 03b Networks system aims to use satellites to provide broadband services at the same speeds as those on offer in rich countries. |

 SAT-3 reinforces market monopolies in Africa - Study
08/09/2008 (APC) -- An APC study examining the impact the SAT-3 fibre optic submarine cable has had on telecommunications in four African countries has found that the potential of the cable has not been properly exploited. Instead, ownership of the cable by telecoms incumbents in the countries researched has reinforced their market positions. |

 South Africa: Court rules on free networks
02/09/2008 (The Weekender) -- A landmark ruling set to shake up the telecommunications sector has been issued by a South African high court. The ruling effectively ends the incumbent Telkom’s lingering monopoly by decreeing that technology company Altech has the right to build its own network. |

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