Consumer Commission tackles high roaming fees

Savvy SA schools SMS

A Cape Town mom is more than a little displeased with her children’s primary school. During the recent heat wave in the Western Cape, the school cancelled athletics practice due to the extreme temperatures. The teachers went home and children, under the age of 13, had to wait alone outside the school in the heat until their parents picked them up at the time the sports practice was meant to end. The school had no way to alert the parents [...]

Contain mining costs by adopting cloud services

Being agile in the face of unpredictable volatility will become even more important as pressure increases on mining companies to continue growing while reducing operating costs. A solution to reducing costs is based in cloud computing, which has become a topic of interest for a variety of industries, specifically in mining where, historically, the preference has been to own and run applications onsite. Cloud computing offers the mining sector the opportunity to consolidate multiple applications by hosting in highly virtualised [...]

DOC successfully connects Tshwane college

The Tshwane North College for Further Education and Training (TNC) broadband project, in partnership with the Department of Communications (DOC), has yielded positive results for teachers and students, says the college.   The Public Private Partnership saw the DOC provide internet connectivity to the college and its campuses through service provider, iBurst. Acting Principal at the college, Charles Pule, said that the TNC Broadband Project was formed  out of frustrations experienced by the TNC following its lack of ability to [...]

Cleaning up your applications portfolio

One of the top five biggest business issues that many IT organisations wrestle with is trying to contain the size of the applications portfolio they are asked to manage. Many organisations simply fail to take a hard look at which applications can be retired and, as a result, the cost of the IT infrastructure needed to support all those applications spirals out of control. Here are some tips on how to rationally clean up the applications portfolio. Set an objective [...]

Creating a successful contact centre

The quality of the consumer’s contact centre experience defines a significant portion of overall brand value – far more so now than was the case a few years ago. For most brands the defining contact centre challenge is to move away from a paradigm where customer service is a gritty and unpleasant coal face experience, and towards positive customer interactions that enhance brand value.  Achieving this shift requires a considerable amount of strategic planning and tactical effort. Decision makers embarking [...]

133% growth for FNB eWallet

FNB’s eWallet has seen a 133% jump in growth in December 2011 - processing over  R140 million in money transfer transactions as compared to R60 million in December 2010. “Every festive season since its launch, eWallet has continued to show remarkable growth. Average daily transaction values have also increased to approximately double the figures we saw a year ago,” says Yolande van Wyk, CEO of FNB eWallet Solutions.   eWallet recently announced various enhancements to the eWallet functionality. Customers can [...]

National libraries get connected

Vodacom has completed the implementation of Phase 1 of a libraries project for internet connectivity in the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces.

The National Department of Arts and Culture multi-million rand project is managed and driven by the National Library of South Africa (NLSA) and is being implemented through partnerships with service providers and provincial libraries.

When completed, almost 300 community libraries will be connected using VSAT and Vodacom ADSL services.

“This project started when we were implementing the SITA/ NLSA open source Library Information Management System (LIMS),” says Lesiba Ledwaba, CIO National Library of South Africa and head of project.

Telkom searches for mobile unit MD

 Telkom has embarked on a recruitment process to appoint a MD for its mobile arm as it gears up to offer several new propositions. The MD will join 8ta, which was introduced in October last year and currently has a market share of  nearly 2%, and become an exco member of the Telkom Group. “It is of great importance that we keep the momentum going. In fact, delivery on our mobile investment features very high on the corporate agenda. It is [...]

SMS direct marketing contravenes CPA

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) allows sending unsolicited direct marketing communications (which is commonly seen as spam by many consumers) under certain conditions. However, if one looks more closely, it turns out that it is simply not possible to comply with these conditions with SMS communications. Before sending out direct marketing messages to a database of contacts, a company would have to ensure the following in terms of the CPA: Check if recipients have already opted-out from direct marketing messages [...]

Consumer Commission tackles high roaming fees

National Consumer commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala, has revealed that the commission has set its sights on tackling the high cost of international roaming for cellphone users.

Briefing the National Assembly’s Trade and Industry Portfolio Committee, Mohlala said the commission would seek the advice of experts around international roaming fees.

The commission says it is currently looking into cellphone and internet service providers that provide pre-paid data but do not allow consumers to carry over unused data to the next month.