Author: Chris Anu

Epson invests over $305 million annually in R&D. Electronics and printing solutions firm Epson has opened a new office and innovation centre in Johannesburg.Located in the heart of SA’s commercial hub, the centre will demonstrate Epson’s latest technology solutions, and help customers to develop new strategies, with a focus on sustainability and industry growth.Local data analysis, customer feedback and input from channel partners will be collected at the centre, to be shared with Epson’s global product design and engineering teams for the co-creating of regionally-relevant solutions, it says.The centre features a home cinema, smart laser projectors, EcoTank printers for home…

The Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (Fedhasa) has taken the South African Music Rights Organisation (Samro) to court over the latter’s 2023 changes to the way public establishments including restaurants and hotels are charged music licensing fees. According to a statement by Fedhasa, restaurants and hotels were previously charged for music played in public spaces only, but the changes made extend these fees to music played from individual TV sets in private hotel rooms. “We are not disputing the usual fees that we have paying for over 30 years. What we are wanting clarification on from the court is…

Boomi CEO Steve Lucas Releases New Book: Digital Impact — The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation Boomi, the intelligent integration and automation leader, today announced the release of Digital Impact: The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation (Wiley), a bold new book by Boomi Chairman and CEO Steve Lucas. In it, Lucas makes a powerful case for a problem few business leaders are talking about: the AI revolution is doomed to stall unless we first fix the broken digital infrastructure that supports it. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415679642/en/ With nearly 30 years of leadership at companies…

Nearly three billion people worldwide still don’t have reliable internet access. This hinders access to education, health care, economic advancement and basic communication, disproportionately affecting underserved regions across Africa, South Asia and Latin America. To try to address this problem, Google parent Alphabet’s X, The Moonshot Factory (previously X Lab) created Project Taara to harness the power of light to deliver high-speed internet wirelessly at low cost. Taara’s technological foundation lies in the legacy of another X project, Project Loon, which was cancelled before it reached commercial fruition. While Loon’s vision of stratospheric balloons delivering internet faced scalability and cost…

KasiD circulated R4.5 million to township restaurant owners through its service last year. Local food delivery service KasiD is targeting exponential growth this year, aiming to be in more than 60% of the 532 townships in South Africa. So says founder and CEO Freddy Mahhumane, telling ITWeb about the platform’s short- to long-term goals. “We’re nearly there,” he said about reaching more townships. “When we started KasiD, we only had nine employees, but we now have 210 employees – directly employed by KasiD. Our main impact will be in the short-term, making sure we touch each township digitally. We are…

The Stitch team poses for a photo on Signal Hill in Cape Town Cape Town-based enterprise payments infrastructure specialist Stitch has announced a US$55-million (R1-billion) series-B funding round led by QED Investors. Stitch, which has a South African and pan-African focus and which was founded in 2020, is led by co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay (previously co-founder of Nigerian ride-hailing app GoMyWay). The money from the latest round, which brings Stitch’s total funding over four years to $107-million, will be used to “deepen and expand” the company’s in-person payments offering, move into the “acquired space” and bolster its online payments…

Eskom specifies two types of cellular network modems to be deployed at remote metering sites. It’s another subdued week on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal with little for the ICT industry to get particularly excited about. The hardware sector will be drawn to two tenders that could turn out to be interesting. Taking the headline is a request from Eskom for the pre-qualification of various suppliers for the manufacturing and supply of cellular network modems. These will be required for remote metering for its distribution business on an ’as and when’ required basis.In its tender documentation, the utility explains that metering…

Esa Alexander/Reuters MultiChoice Group has suffered a setback in a long-running investigation into whether a 2013 agreement between the pay-television broadcaster and the SABC amounted to a notifiable merger under the Competition Act. The Competition Tribunal on Monday said it had dismissed an “exception application” brought by MultiChoice over a channel-supply agreement with the SABC, which it inked during the Jacob Zuma presidency 12 years ago. “The case arises from a complaint lodged by Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers, the SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition and the Media Monitoring Project Benefit Trust,” the tribunal said in a statement. MultiChoice…

Rimini Street to Report First Quarter 2025 Financial Results on May 1, 2025 Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of end-to-end enterprise software support and innovation solutions, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle, SAP and VMware software, today announced it will report earnings after market close on May 1, 2025. The company will host a conference call and webcast on that date to discuss the first quarter 2025 results and the 2025 outlook at 5:00 p.m. Eastern / 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250414870291/en/A live webcast of…

MTN Group has partnered with social media giant Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, for an initiative aimed at improving the quality of voice and video calls on apps like WhatsApp. According to a statement, the two companies will, through the collaboration, deliver optimisations to MTN’s “application-aware networks” and the “network-aware applications” providing the voice and video call services across 12 of MTN’s operating markets. “Since Mobile World Congress 2024, MTN and Meta teams have been collaborating to identify key areas for improvement and implement targeted network optimisations that enhance the interaction between mobile networks and real-time…