At Home

Woolworths’ social media team was kept on its toes as it had to field an inundation of complaints and queries via online platforms, after the retail giant’s IT systems failed. The retailer suffered a blanket technical failure, which left key services across its South African stores – including card payments, airtime purchases, utility bill payments and redemption of gift cards – inoperative. – ITWeb

Spice VAS Africa is changing its strategy for the South African marketplace, focusing on apps and mobi sites, rather than voice. “In SA, the landscape is very different to the rest of Africa; voice is more expensive here but data is reasonably well priced and feature phones are more prevalent in this country,” said Spice VAS Africa CEO Arun Nager. – ITWeb

Avaya is focusing on helping partners throughout the African continent grow their regional adoption of the company’s video; collaboration and customer care solutions. The company recently hosted its Partner-Connect Conference, in Johannesburg, where Selvin Kristnen, MD of Avaya SA, revealed the company also wants to change people’s perception of viewing it solely as a provider of call centre solutions. – ITWeb

The Telkom Do Gaming League (DGL) continues to expand as more gamers look to pit their skills against each other in SA’s largest online gaming league. Ricus Groenewald, Telkom gaming specialist, notes that the league has grown 66% to over 4 000 entries into the DGL, backing the success of the DGL 2012 championships, which took place at the rAge Expo. – ITWeb

iCreate Software, a banking analytics company, is tackling the developing world – and SA is one of its key markets. SA, says CEO Vivek Subramanyam, was one of iCreate’s early successes when the company first began operations. He says experience has shown the firm that SA’s banking community has been an early adopter of advanced technologies. – ITWeb

Telkom is dropping the prices on its uncapped offerings by up to 40%, as of this month. The operator said customers can expect price reductions of up to 40% for consumer uncapped products and up to 35% for business uncapped products - depending on the relevant package - as of 1 February. The decreased prices follow Telkom’s announcement of a “soft cap” earlier last month. – ITWeb

Big South African telecommunication firms such as MTN and Vodacom have had Twitter and Facebook accounts for years, but Telkom has only launched its social media campaign recently. The fixed-line operator, which is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), has announced that customers can communicate with the company via www.facebook.com/TelkomZa, @TelkomZA on Twitter, and on LinkedIn. – ITWeb Africa

The world’s largest mobile phone operator by subscribers, China Mobile, is considering investing in South Africa. Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile, said last year March that the company was looking to expand its global operations. However, at the time Jianzhou reportedly said China Mobile had been held back by high prices. – ITWeb Africa

Telecommunications firm France Telecom-Orange plans to announce its entry into the South African mobile market as it kicks off its sponsorship of the African Cup of Nations (AFCON). It is unclear as to what Orange plans exactly regarding its forthcoming South Africa venture. But experts have been predicting the launch of Orange in South Africa over the last two years. – ITWeb Africa

Into Africa

Airtel Tanzania has announced that it has slashed on network call rates by 70% for its prepaid customers. According to the mobile operator, its subscribers are planned to pay less than $0.06 cents per second after the first two minutes of each call that they make. – ITWeb Africa

Russian telecommunications firm VimpelCom plans to provide free access to Wikipedia for its subscribers in Africa and Asia. The free service, dubbed Wikipedia Zero, is intended to be the first initiative in a series of developments targeted at including other Wikimedia services for emerging markets as well. – ITWeb Africa

Essar Telecom Kenya plans to skip 3G and rather invest directly in LTE. This is according to Essar Telecom Kenya’s country manager Madhur Taneja, who has said it is too late to start investing in 3G infrastructure after the world has started moving to 4G. Taneja has added that the move could help save costs for the telco as well. – ITWeb Africa

The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) plans to reduce the country’s mobile interconnection rates across all networks by 69% in March this year. The TRCA proposes that interconnection call rates in the East African nation be slashed to $0.02 cents per second from the $0.06 cents that customers are currently paying. – ITWeb Africa

Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson

Ericsson has appointed Fredrik Jejdling as its new head of the sub-Saharan African region, effective as of 1 April. Currently head of the Indian region for Ericsson, Jejdling succeeds Lars Lindén. Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg said the Indian market has seen strong mobile data developments, which Jejdling has leveraged to extend the company’s position in the market. – ITWeb Africa

The Zambia Telecommunication Company (Zamtel) plans to roll out over 400 new 3G sites across the country this year in a bid to double its subscriber base to two million. The company said it is planning to carry out extensive rollout of its 3G base stations this year alone. – ITWeb Africa

The Nigerian arm of United Arab Emirates (UAE) telecoms service provider, Etisalat, has reported that it has signed more than 15 million customers to its network. The network, which was launched four years ago in Nigeria, says it now controls 15% market share of West African country’s highly competitive telecoms market. – ITWeb Africa

Kenya’s leading telco, Safaricom, has partnered with network solutions company CommProve to deploy a monitoring service. The two firms have entered into a management agreement that will see Safaricom deploy CommProve’s next generation network monitoring solution, CommProve NetLedgem. The deployment of this new network solution is scheduled to be completed by the first half of this year. – ITWeb Africa

The second largest mobile operator in Zimbabwe, Telecel, has said its subscriber base has reached 2.5 million in comparison to Econet’s recently announced 8 million network users. Although Econet and Telecel Zimbabwe have announced a significant boost in their network user numbers, telecommunications experts insisted that multiple SIM cardholders distort the number of the companies’ actual and loyal network users. – ITWeb Africa

Abroad

South Korean electronics giant Samsung plans to invest $1.7 billion in expanding and fitting out its operations in Kunshan, a fast-growing manufacturing hub west of Shanghai. Samsung’s expansion comes as the world’s largest maker of handsets, memory chips and televisions attempts to diversify its clients and exert greater control over its sprawling manufacturing network, which includes 250 supplier factories in China. – Reuters

The Japanese government is set to launch the world’s first 4K TV broadcast in July 2014, roughly two years ahead of schedule, to help stir demand for ultra high-definition televisions. The service will begin from communications satellites, followed by satellite broadcasting and ground digital broadcasting. – Reuters

Twitter launched advertising services in the Middle East and North Africa as the social media firm seeks to exploit a tripling of its regional subscriber base following its widespread use during the Arab Spring protests. “The two are interconnected - the rapid growth of our user base with the timing of why we want to help brands connect with that audience,” said Shailesh Rao, Twitter VP for international operations. – Reuters

Neelie Kroes, European Commission

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, has taken an $80 million stake in Twitter. BlackRock will buy shares directly from early Twitter employees seeking to liquidate their stock holdings and options. The six-year old social media company will not raise new capital as part of the private deal that values the firm at more than $9 billion. – Reuters

The European Commission unveiled a deal with Hewlett-Packard, Telefonica and eight other telecoms and technology firms aimed at filling up to 700,000 high tech job vacancies. Calling it a grand coalition, EU Telecoms Commissioner Neelie Kroes said the companies pledged to offer training, free online university courses or provide start-up funding. – Reuters