The week in review

AT HOME

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri told parliament`s portfolio committee on communications last week that of the 23 countries in eastern and southern Africa that were targeted for inclusion in the undersea cable that runs up the east coast of Africa, so far only 12 had agreed to take part and had ratified the protocol. She said Kenya was one of the major players that had not yet signed the agreement. However, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, which would be served by a link through Kenya, had signed. She said a number of international funding agencies had objected to their exclusion from the project. - Business Report

VODACOM would probably draw up a shortlist of possible investors next month for its planned $1 billion empowerment deal, a source close to the deal said. The board of Vodacom would meet in the middle of next month to try and whittle down a long list of black investors keen to take a stake. - Reuters

MTN, sub-Saharan Africa`s biggest mobile operator, said it was slashing tariffs on data rates and contracts in SA by up to 20% to spur demand. The SA-based company also said it was launching new data contracts and special offers that included extra bandwidth for free. - Reuters

POWER and automation technology group ABB SA posted a sterling performance last year, with revenue up 11% on the previous year`s at R2.7 billion, the highest it has achieved in its 14 years in the country. - Business Day

NETFLORIST, which claims to be the country`s largest flower and gifting business, said its orders for Valentine`s Day leapt by 50% over 2006. It received over 6 500 orders over that week. MD Ryan Bacher attributed the growth to increased awareness of the Internet as a viable and convenient shopping channel and confidence in NetFlorist as a brand.

KNOWLEDGE Integration Dynamics has opened a Cape Town office in response to the "burgeoning" enterprise data integration and business intelligence market in the region.

INTO AFRICA

ETHIOPIA: Some 42 towns in Somali State have got access to digital and exchange telephone services. Activities are also under way to introduce similar services to ten other border towns in the coming four months as part of the endeavour to extend telephone services to 52 towns in the state. - The Ethiopian Herald

LESOTHO: Johannesburg-based Econet Wireless is expected to exercise its rights to buy a controlling stake in Telecom Lesotho, the sole fixed-line operator in that country. The shares will be sold by Eskom Enterprises, which owns 71% of Mountain Communications, which, in turn, owns 70% of Telecom Lesotho. - Bloomberg

NIGERIA: The Mobile Telecommunication Company (MTC) Group of Kuwait, owner of Celtel International, has unveiled a US$10.5 billion investment fund to expand mobile telecom operations in Africa. MTC MD Saad Al-Barrak claimed that with the fund, the group, through Celtel Africa, becomes the first mobile service provider in Africa to invest such a sum of money in network improvement and expansion. - This Day

ZIMBABWE: Mobile operator Econet Wireless will see its subscriber capacity increased tenfold to 10 million following the recent introduction of the new numbering plan, the company has said. The new numbering plan will result in the addition of a 2 after the first three numbers (091). The previous numbering plan restricted the company to a million subscribers. - Zimbabwe Standard

ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwean cellular phone operators have begun limiting the number of international telephone calls from Zimbabwe, citing the unavailability of foreign currency to pay for termination rates, charged by foreign networks to connect cellphone calls to recipients in their countries. Officials in the communications industry told IRIN that the tariffs charged by local companies were no longer viable because the government was fixing the Zimbabwean dollar at "unrealistic rates" against major international currencies.

ABROAD

MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates said the company`s Windows Vista operating system had been incredibly well received. "People who sell PCs have seen a very nice lift in their sales," Gates said. He made the comments when asked to clarify comments by Microsoft CE Steve Ballmer" rel=tag>Steve Ballmer that analysts` forecasts for fiscal 2008 revenue for the Windows Vista operating system were "overly aggressive". - Reuters

NIKON EXPECTS double-digit growth in shipments of compact digital cameras next business year, following target sales this year of 6.5 million units. The Japanese camera maker aims to gain 10% of the global market share in compact digital cameras by an unspecified date, up from an expected 8.5% market share by March, it said. - Reuters

TO WOO A NEW generation of loyal buyers, General Electric (GE) is lending its name to a variety of youth-oriented consumer electronics products. The new products - eight digital cameras and a photo printer - will be sold worldwide with the GE brand, though they are being designed and marketed by a new company, General Imaging. Prices haven`t been announced, but the cameras will be available to American consumers in mid-April. - BusinessWeek.com

THE CUBAN government is to migrate thousands of its computers to open source software, in a move that distances the communist nation from Microsoft, reports ZDNet.

AOL HAS JOINED Microsoft in supporting OpenID, giving the free identification scheme 63 million new users, reports BBC News. OpenID is a decentralised identification system that lets individuals use a single password for any site that supports it.

SCIENTISTS are developing the next generation of robot-driven cars and predict they could be shuttling humans around by the year 2030, it emerged at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco. The first wave of intelligent robot cars, capable of understanding and reacting to the world around them, will be tested this November in a competition run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. - AFP

A FORMER IBM employee, sacked for visiting an Internet chat room "for a sexual experience during work", has sued the company for $5 million, reports The Register. In his lawsuit, James Pacenza claimed he visits chat rooms "to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an army patrol in Vietnam". He said the stress turned him into "a sex addict and, with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict".

TECH GIANT Hewlett-Packard posted a strong double-digit annual rise in turnover for its fiscal first quarter. The vendor grew total turnover 11% for the three months to 31 January to $25.1 billion. GAAP net profits leapt 26% to $1.5 billion. - CRN