Lloyd Gedye
Lloyd Gedye is a freelance journalist and one of the founders of The Con.
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/ 29 January 2007

Wiggle, Eskom, wiggle

Eskom is de-mothballing old stations, rolling out new capacity and achieving vast energy savings, but with such run-down and stretched power resources, there will be little wiggle room in electricity provision for a long time to come. Recent outages saw Eskom lose 25% of the power on the national grid in the peak of summer.

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/ 19 January 2007

Get those digits dialling

Johannesburg’s phenomenal growth rate is the reason why, from this week, you have to punch in an area code every time you make a call. Of the eight million fixed-line phone numbers available for allocation to Johannesburg residents, only 800 000 are still unallocated — not the most desirable of circumstances for the launch of Neotel, the second fixed-line operator.

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/ 18 January 2007

The cellphone freebie wars

Fancy a new quad bike, a laptop with printer, television, hi-fi, DVD player, camera, home theatre system, PlayStation, Xbox 360, skottel braai, pair of sunglasses or Game shopping vouchers? In the rush to capture new cellphone customers in the saturated South African market, operators and service providers are bundling expensive free gifts with contracts to entice new subscribers.

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/ 9 January 2007

From the cradle to the market

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, is at the forefront of local technological advancements.

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/ 8 December 2006

Dramatic drop in ARV prices

Antiretrovirals are being procured by the South African government for only 5% of the price it was paying for them in 2001. This amazing decrease in ARV prices is a result of the voluntary licences granted by multi-nationals to generics manufacturers. South African company Aspen Pharmacare currently sells a triple therapy generic ARV treatment consisting of 150mg Lamivudine, 40mg Stavudine and 200mg nevirapine to government for R97,27 per person a month.

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/ 1 December 2006

The Hatfield connection

The Pretoria suburb of Hatfield is leading the pack in the race to bring affordable internet access to broadband-starved South Africa. Residents and business owners in Hatfield can sign up for 1GB of wireless broadband for a mere R180 a month, or a 3GB service for R350, thanks to a network set up by internet service provider (ISP) Neology as a proof of concept.

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/ 27 November 2006

You’ve been Voiped!

A dual pricing system, which South African cellphone operators have threatened to use to protect themselves against cannibalisation of voice revenue, has not been sanctioned by the communications regulator. This dual pricing system would allow the cellular operators to charge one price for normal data traffic, such as email, browsing and downloading, and then bill traffic that was identified as voice-over internet protocol.