Broadband

Broadband : Latest Posts

09 March 2010 00:42

Mobile operators cut prices

But, are they hoping to deflect attention from retail prices?

JOHANNESBURG - Vodacom this weekend joined MTN in trumpeting its latest price cuts for consumers. It said that its new prepaid tariffs are the lowest in the country. At 2.8c per second, the all-day call rate equates to R1.70 per minute (It also unhelpfully "neglects" to mention in its release that calls to other networks now cost R1.80 per minute).

This of course follows MTN's announcement just last week that call charges on its One Rate PayAsYouGo would drop to "less than 3c per second". At no point in its announcement did it ever detail what "less than" equated to, but helpfully Read post

Moneyweb blogs

Across the Atlantic

All Things Considered

Boardroom Talk: Alec Hogg

Letters from Zimbabwe

The sum of all things

Tidemarks

Wealth Building

02 March 2010 12:18

The (real) internet on your mobile phone

A better way to surf the web on your phone.

JOHANNESBURG - Video is becoming increasingly important on the internet. You need only look at the wild popularity of YouTube to see that.

But video is almost completely absent from the mobile web, due to problems with delivering it to hundreds of different types of phones with limited processing power and dozens of different operating systems and browsers. And don't mention that huge bandwidth conundrum. Imagine a few hundred users trying to stream full video in the same area at the same time.

Nearly four years ago, this column suggested that Opera Mini provided the best way to surf the internet on your mobile phone (The real internet on your cellphone ... without 3G!).

But, the world...

Read post

24 February 2010 10:19

The revolution will not be plugged in to charge

Wireless charging is the next big thing.

JOHANNESBURG - Throw away your mobile phone charger. Okay, not just yet. Soon, though.

Wireless charging is the next big thing.

By far the most popular stand at last week's Mobile World Congress 2010 (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain was an Israeli technology startup, Powermat.

The stand became so crowded that it was quickly pretty much "closed" to the 49 000 delegates, and visitors had to wait for a Powermat exhibitor to take them on a tour of the stand.

The premise behind Powermat is simple. It provides real-time, wireless charging to all sorts of devices. The most attractive and most useful is no doubt for mobile phones. T...

Read post