Technological innovation is key to South Africa’s growth strategy, helping the country achieve international competitiveness and growing the local knowledge economy. The Innovation Hub in Pretoria, where start-up businesses are busy developing cutting-edge technologies that will take local and international industries by storm, is at the forefront of local technological advancements.
The Innovation Hub provides a space where a number of small businesses operate in a collaborative network, sharing resources and skills to create innovative technologies. CEO Dr Neville Comins says the growth of science parks internationally has been acknowledged as a stimulus for economic growth.
“We’re not a letting agency,” says Comins. “Not everybody who walks through that door gets in. We have a strong vetting process.” Comins says The Hub has a “think scrum” of more than 5 000 businesses who bring their expertise to the network.
The Hub organises regular networking opportunities where people get the opportunity to interact with other members to discuss innovations and technologies. Numerous businesses have been launched as a result of these gatherings.
Take MMB as an example. MMB founders Dries Prinsloo and Etienne Louw met about three years ago at a Hub event and decided to start a company together. It is now housed at The Hub’s Maxum Business Incubator.
Comins says 80% of all start-up businesses fail and that it is difficult to market a small business. The Hub gives start-ups some firepower and great marketing, while the three-year incubator process provides mentorship and a supportive network of other innovators.
Company profile: LUUK Information and Communication Technology
Fed up with paying exorbitant cellphone call rates? Well, a telecoms research and development company is about to shake up the local market with new technology that will drastically bring down these rates.
Luuk is based in The Innovation Hub and was started by Tobie van der Spuy and Harvey Theron two years ago.
Van der Spuy says the company’s initial focus was web development, but they soon realised that cellphones were the future, because there were just not enough PCs in the country.
“We have five million internet users in South Africa and 25-million cellphone users — you do the maths,” says Van der Spuy.
Luuk rarely takes a product to market. Instead, it partners other companies in order to maintain its focus on research and development. For this reason, Luuk has partnered with Webtec’s Paul Dinsmore in taking their Push 2 Talk (P2T) product to market.
It has taken the original technology — known as Push to Talk (PTT), which allows users to use a cellphone in a similar way to a walkie-talkie — and applied it to the market. In a normal cellphone call, both parties can hear each other at the same time. With P2T, you hold down a button to record a voice message and, when you are done, it is sent to the receiver using the operator’s data network.
Because the voice message is transferred using the data network, it is a highly cost-efficient way of communicating. Dinsmore says a P2T voice message costs about 2,5c a minute instead of a call rate of about R1,40 a minute.
Because P2T works on GPRS, a call from Johannesburg to San Francisco costs as much as a call from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
“There was a practical walkie-talkie application. We said let’s make it useful and get it on the right platform so we can move it across all phones and across all networks,” says Van der Spuy.
“One of the larger cellphone operators in South Africa is generating eight million missed calls a month, and that’s because most of these people can’t afford to communicate.” He believes P2T has huge potential for the low-income and youth markets.
“The whole concept is that push to talk will deliver to the mobile environment what voice-over-internet protocol [VOIP] has done to the fixed-line environment,” says Dinsmore. “It will lead to drastic reduction in costs but, unlike VOIP, where you need expensive broadband to see the benefits, everyone can use P2T as long as their phone is GSM-enabled.”
“This will replace cellphone calls as standard.” says Dinsmore.
Company profile: MMB Service Providers
Want to watch women’s golf on your cellphone, the latest video release on your PC or two of South Africa’s rugby schools slogging it out on the field while you’re living in Europe? If so, MMB Service Providers is a company on which to keep an eye.
MMB is a tenant in The Innovation Hub’s Maxum Business Incubator, which is offering a cutting edge platform for the distribution of digital media content to computers and cellphones.
The world of broadband and mobile television is definitely uncharted waters, a by-product of the converging ICT sector, where operators want to play in all spaces.
However, MMB believes its MyStation and MyContent products, which it has licensed from Swedish company MPS Broadband, are the best platforms around.
MMB was started in September 2005 by Dries Prinsloo and Etienne Louw, and launched with their coverage of the Women’s World Cup of Golf, which they broadcast via broadband to Europe and Japan, and to cellphones in South Africa.
“We are looking at doing it again next year, but to 15 countries this time,” says Louw. “This is leading-edge stuff. The business models are not here yet, but we are trying things.”
“We look after everyone,” says Prinsloo. “You know, telcos, content aggregators or the normal guy in the street who has his own broadband TV station, it’s like YouTube on steroids.”
Louw says the South African broadcasting sector is in a state of flux, with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa calling for applications for broadcasting licences.
Sixteen companies applied for licences, but the South African market cannot support that many suppliers. After a few years, three or four will gain a stronghold.
“What is exciting is that, on a second tier level, we could have hundreds of providers,” says Louw. “I could be a high-school student and have my own little school rugby TV station. All of a sudden, Affies plays Waterkloof and I have 30 000 South Africans sitting around the world willing to pay R10 to watch the game. You get a school kid with a video camera and we can offer him editing facilities on the side of the field if he has a broadband connection.”
Municipalities around the country are building their own telecommunications networks to offer affordable broadband to residents.
Louw says MMB is talking to municipalities about setting up an archive of broadcast material available to residents as a value-added service.
He says the potential for giving people easy access to local government and educational content is huge. Louw says they are also talking to large video suppliers about having all their films online for people to rent or buy.
“You can be sitting in your home and say: I would really like to watch that movie now,” says Louw. “There is no driving to your video shop to go get it. We want to allow people to watch things when they want.”
“On their own terms,” chimes in Prinsloo.