Smartz Solutions and Jasco Enterprise announce strategic partnership to drive contact centre innovation in Africa. Smartz Solutions, which positions itself as a leader in cloud-based contact centre technology, partners with Jasco Enterprise, a long-established technology and ICT solutions provider. This collaboration marks a significant step in transforming Africa’s contact centre landscape by delivering scalable, future-ready and cost-effective communication solutions.Partnership rooted in innovation and flexibilityJasco Enterprise, with its nearly 50-year heritage, has continuously evolved to meet the needs of businesses navigating digital transformation. Now, with a renewed focus on agility and customer-centric solutions, Jasco is expanding its contact centre offering beyond…
Author: Chris Anu
MTN Group on Monday cautioned that competition in South Africa’s telecommunications sector is intensifying. As a result, the consumer prepaid business in South Africa recorded year-on-year service revenue growth of just 0.8%, with a “slight slowdown” to 0.3% year on year in the final three months of 2024. “This was largely due to increased competitive intensity in the market as we increased prices in May 2024 and value-seeking customers continued to optimise their spend,” the group said in notes published with its results for the financial year ended 31 December 2024. The consumer prepaid business recorded year-on-year service revenue growth…
The South African Post Office seeks a managed network solution to address its electronic communication requirements. (Photograph by SAPO via X) It’s a quiet week on National Treasury’s eTender Portal, with government departments focused on the delivery of the reworked 2025 Budget speech from finance minister Enoch Godongwana. While several concessions were made to appease members of the Government of National Unity, further changes may yet need to be made before it gets the 50% plus one vote to be passed. It is amid this subdued activity that the beleaguered South African Post Office (SAPO) takes the headline with its…
MultiChoice Group has announced its price adjustments for the year ahead, and they’re mostly in line with inflation or below it – though some Showmax packages have received huge increases. The following monthly price adjustments have been made to MultiChoice’s various DStv bouquets: DStv Stream packages: No price changes DStv Premium (satellite): R929 to R979, an increase of 5.4% (Showmax is included) DStv Compact Plus (satellite): R619 to R659, or 6.5% (Showmax at 40% discount) DStv Compact (satellite): R469 to R479, an increase of 2.1% (Showmax at 40% discount) DStv Family (satellite): R329 to R339, or 3% DStv Access (satellite):…
MultiChoice says for Premium, Compact Plus and Compact subscribers, a concurrent stream on any device has been added. Pay-TV operator MultiChoice South Africa has announced its annual price and product adjustments for DStv and Showmax.Byron Du Plessis, CEO of MultiChoice SA, says: “Recognising the financial pressures faced by South African households, MultiChoice has implemented considered adjustments, focusing on enhancing value across its packages, with certain products receiving no increase, including all DStv Stream packages, Box Office movies and Showmax Entertainment with the ADD Movies premium movie bolt-on being reduced to just R49pm, a 38% price reduction.” In a statement, MultiChoice…
Telviva’s Rob Lith Cloud-based communications specialist Telviva, known for its unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) and contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) offerings that allow for better-quality conversations, has announced the launch of a South African first-to-market software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that gives businesses native voice capability within their Microsoft Teams environment. This gives organisations native voice capability within their Teams environment with extended PBX functionality. Telviva’s Call2Teams seamlessly integrates Microsoft Teams with Telviva’s voice system, offering native voice capability within the Teams environment at a 40% savings compared to using the traditional Microsoft Teams Phone system. The Call2Teams solution eliminates the need for…
The Wired4Women Awards have garnered phenomenal support from sponsors and the wider ICT community. The Wired4Women Awards, now in their second year, continue to receive phenomenal support from the South African business and tech sectors.Launched in 2024 by the Wired4Women Tech Forum, in partnership with Telkom and ITWeb Brainstorm, these awards are now firmly established as a prestigious platform that recognises and celebrates the significant contributions of women across various roles in the South African technology sector – from C-level executives and business leaders to innovators, entrepreneurs and emerging talents. The initiative aligns with the Wired4Women Tech Forum’s mission to…
Creating an itinerary for a vacation. Planning a workout regime to optimise gains. Generating content ideas for an Instagram-famous dog named Meatball Ravioli. There’s no limit these days to the uses of artificial intelligence. The technology promises to do everything faster, smarter and better than humans. But far from the excitement on Wall Street or Silicon Valley, everyday people are embracing AI, hoping to make themselves faster, smarter and better. It’s been a little more than two years since OpenAI released its chatbot, ChatGPT, which opened a public gateway to AI. Before then, the idea of artificial intelligence felt technical…
Caswell Mthembu, Business Development Manager, BlueStar. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is a way for retailers to identify items using radio waves. It transmits data from an RFID tag to a reader, delivering accurate, real-time information. Perhaps the most familiar example in retail is the security tag attached to clothing items – this is disengaged at the counter, when the customer pays for the item, but if they leave without paying, the tag combines with a reader at the entrance to sound an alarm.Caswell Mthembu, Business Development Manager at BlueStar, points out that RFID technology offers retailers a wide range…
US President Donald Trump at the weekend signed an executive order cutting funding to Voice of America. Founded in 1942, VoA – whose future is now uncertain – uses shortwave radio to broadcast current affairs programming to millions of listeners across the world. Shortwave radio – where the wavelengths of the signal being broadcast are between 10m and 80m – was an important technology between the 1960s and the 1990s. However, its significance diminished as digital media platforms, especially the internet, became ubiquitous. Shortwave radio’s significance was largely due to its ability to be broadcast over extremely long distances. Signals bounce off…
