SA Minister of Communications – Reading the Tea Leaves

Arthur Goldstuck has written a thoughtful piece on the newly appointed South African Minister of Communications, Siphiwe Nyanda, and his new deputy Dina Pule.  He does a good job of highlighting their key strengths and weaknesses.

Based on their lack of experience in the telecom sector, much will depend on who they choose to be advised [...]

Municipal Broadband Investment in South Africa

There’s an interesting AFP article on the city of Johannesburg’s 1 billion Rand (~105 million USD) contract with Ericsson to deliver municipal broadband infrastructure.  In it they quote an anonymous “telecoms expert” who says:

…that municipalities were already stretched to provide basic utility services, and that the provisioning of telecoms services would simply put additional strain [...]

South African National Broadband Forum

I am getting quite excited about the upcoming South African Broadband Forum next week.  Inspired by the coalition that emerged in the United States to get broadband infrastructure investment on the political agenda in the run-up to the U.S. election, the Association for Progressive Communications, the Shuttleworth Foundation, Sangonet, and the South Africa Connect project [...]