FMTech reports that senior executives at Vodacom will be meeting shortly to discuss their broadband tariff plans, with the expected upshot being a substantial reduction in data prices.

“Data tariffs will have to come down. We will make an announcement soon,” said Romeo Kumalo, the group’s commercial director.

He said Vodacom hoped to trigger a “revolution” in broadband communications similar to that which followed the introduction of prepaid packages.

“Making the Internet accessible to the masses is our key strategy for this year,” Kumalo says. “The majority of South Africans will experience the Internet for the very first time on their mobiles.”

An indication of what lies in store for consumers – albeit at the higher end of the market – is Vodacom’s announcement that it was reducing the tariff for its BlackBerry service. Both contract and prepaid users will now pay R59/month for unlimited data access on their BlackBerry handsets.

This option is restricted to data downloaded on the BlackBerry device, whereas normal data tariffs apply when the device is tethered to a computer.

The price of the BlackBerry Enterprise service has also been reduced, from R139/month to R98/month.

Gartner Analyst Will Hahn joins the gang on this week’s episode as part of his visit to South Africa – you don’t want to miss this one. We discuss:

• Will’s take on the South African telecommunication’s space. What is the state of play of our market and what are his predictions for the future?
• The maturity of the technology market in South Africa and trends that are shaping the way we do things down here.
• The move to IP telephony and market expectations in this regard.
• We review Neotel NeoFlex Data as Brett and Duncan have been putting the offering through its paces. How fast is it? What latency are they seeing? Can you stay connected in a power outage? All answers within…
• Jerry Yang stepping down as CEO of Yahoo!
• PC Magazine halting print and going online only. What is happening to print publishing?
• Net Neutrality in the USA, the Obama government and how the landscape is changing state-side.
• Is email dead?
• Gmail introduces themes.
• Duncan has a Nokia 5800. It’s poop.
• If you think the 5800 sucks, wait until you use a Samsung Omnia. We discuss the touch phone market. It’s all iPhone for now.
• News on the arrival of a local Google data centre.
• Our predictions surrounding Google Maps – and some general GPS discussion.
• Guitar Hero: World Tour is now available in South Africa.
• How off-line games make the transition to online.
• Wrath of the Lich King breaks a record. We’re not sure which one exactly.
• Microsoft South Africa says it is lobbying for a local Xbox Live service.
• Afrigator has a new revenue scheme for bloggers.

And more…

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Featuring four Ethernet ports and a built-in WiFi Access point, the new data-only device is perfect for premium home users and small and medium sized business environments.

Gregory Kee, Head of Product Strategy at Neotel says that although the company will be setting a capacity limit to the solution, it’s unlikely that users will reach that limit through fair use – it will be above the 10GB mark and users will be able to buy additional capacity once that limit has been reached, at 8c per MB.

Let’s face it, that’s a steal…

Even though the solution is based on CDMA Revision A and as such delivers 3.1Mbps/1.8Mbps performance, he confirms that users can expect performance levels of 450-900Kbps downstream and 300-700kbps upstream.

The new technology does however bring the network latency right down.

Where Neotel Prime – the telco’s standalone, consumer focused converged voice and data solution delivers a latency of between 200 and 400ms to sites in the west coast of the US, Kee says that the new SMB data solution will improve that by between four and five times.

During the course of next Kee says the telco plans to bring its SMB voice solution (NeoFlex Voice) and its new data solution (NeoFlex Data) together in a ‘office in a box’ solution that provides SMBs with everything they need from a communications perspective.

He however wasn’t able to shed any light on timeframes, cost and performance levels.

Watch this space for an upcoming review of the new Neotel device.

This week we recorded live at rAge 2008, thanks to Toshiba. Dimitri Tserpis, CTO for Mustek also dropped by for a chat. Topics covered:

• Exhibitions growing in South Africa while they scale down everywhere else.
• Nokia launches the 5800 iPhone competitor.
• The HTC Dream G1 is coming to South Africa. Simon is probably in trouble for giving out the details.
• Brett reckons the 3G iPhone establishes a connection quicker on MTN than Vodacom.
• Telkom is about to launch its HSDPA network.
• The changing broadband landscape.
• Google’s ‘Search 2001′.
• iBurst’s strange WiMAX offering.
• Qualcomm’s Gobi chipset that connects to anything, anywhere.
• Rising power consumption on the upper end of the PC spectrum.
• Retro computing. Bear with us.
• Multichoice’s competition is coming from the strangest places…
• The DSTV HD PVR’s software bugs have not been sorted out yet, but will be soon.
• Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri still going at Altech.

And way more…

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We gather in an overcast Johannesburg this week, sans Ben Kelly, to discuss the following:

• Open document formats and the SABS appealing ISO’s ratification of OOXML.
• The ultra-portable and sub-notebook market and who’s doing what in the space.
• Microsoft’s strategy for Windows on portables.
• Online operating systems, ala Jooce.
• Privacy online and why people trust Google.
• Mashing-up social networks and examples of applications that do this, like Flock.
• Instant messaging.
• Red Hat’s Mugshot.
• Vodacom’s WirelessG, iPass and other innovative wireless offerings, like Skyrove.
• Utility bandwidth.
• Final confirmation of Neotel’s consumer offerings, including uncapped solutions.

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In this episode the gang is joined by Gerdus van Eeden, CTO of MultiChoice — our first ever guest on the show. We discuss:

• HD TV coming to DSTV, as well as DVB-H and other network features on the way. Gerdus answers all our questions.
• Ben and Duncan have Neotel handsets! We reveal the consumer offering from the SNO, with pricing.
• Ex Telkom CEO Papi Molotsane is threatening to get back into the telco market.
• Altech’s confusing WiMax situation.
• India’s Bharti Airtel rumored to be interested in MTN.
• Interest supposedly shown in GijimaAST by BT.
• Apple’s acquisition of PA Semiconducor and what this could mean for future products.
• The launch of Nintendo’s Wii Fit
• Facebook Chat
• HP launches its first global Concept Store in South Africa.

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This week we recorded the show live from Podcamp SA in Bloemfontein! A big thanks to Nico Baird and the rest of the Podcamp crew who put together a great event, even if we did miss half of it thanks to Duncan blowing out a tyre on the way to Bloem.

In this episode we discuss:

• Podcamp SA
• Fring for the iPhone
• iPhone possibly being released in India through Vodafone
• Gauteng’s planned fibre ring
• Mobile broadband and data
• Cell C supposedly becoming profitable
• The Psystar ‘Open PC’ Mac clone
• More of our investigations into WantItAll
• Apple halting its Safari for Windows stealth installs
• Telkom taking on the Competition Commission
• Seagate suing STEC
• Sun’s Richard Barrington and green computing

And probably some other stuff too…

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We have a full-house this week on ZA Tech Show with Simon Dingle, Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod, Jon Tullett and Ben Kelly discussing:

- ISO ratifying OOXML as a standard
- Google Gears allowing you to work on Google Docs offline
- Douglas Merrill resigning as CIO of Google and going to EMI
- Telkom Media’s troubles
- Broadcast regulation in SA
- SA Blog Awards
- Firefox 3 beta 5
- The PWN to OWN awards
- WordPress 2.5 and web app security
- The promises of Intel Atom and mobile computing
- SA Cricket entering the blogosphere

It’s all yours for Mahala.

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This week Simon Dingle, Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard, Jon Tullett and Duncan McLeod spend a Good Friday morning discussing:

• The passing of Arthur C. Clarke
• Windows Vista Service Pack 1
• Windows XP Service Pack 3
• The rumors surrounding Windows 7
• Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) beta
• A new virus threat surrounding zip files
• MTN’s performance in the Middle East
• Telkom’s new Metro LAN offering
• West coast versus East coast bandwidth
• The ‘all you can eat’ iTunes rumor
• How music publishing and distribution are evolving in the digital age

…and some other stuff in-between.

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Jon’s away in Boston this week but Ben, Simon, Duncan and Brett spent Friday afternoon drinking beer and discussing, amongst other things:

• Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3
• The enigma that is Steve Ballmer
• The Xbox 360 price-cut
• The iPhone SDK
• Eassy getting the green-light
• Neotel’s consumer offerings
• DSTV’s price-hike

Oh, you’ll also need to watch this, we discuss it in the show:

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