Internet South Africa
SA Govt Planning to Bring Internet to All Homes by 2024 – Communications Minister
Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, South Africa’s Communications and Digital Tech Minister. Image sourced from News24. South Africa’s Minister of Communications, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, says the country’s government is reviewing its plans to ensure that all South Africans have access to connectivity at their home by 2024. Speaking at the annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Minister Ntshavheni said the European Union had committed itself to 1 terabyte to the home by 2025, and challenged the ICT sector to commit to similar targets for the country. “The challenge will be what South Africa should commit to given the development disparities that are not only a result of class differences but the geolocation of the person – the urban/rural divide” she s...
How Wits University’s New “Light Beam” Tech Can Bring Fibre to Informal Settlements
An experimental setup in the Optical Communications Laboratory used to develop optimal error correction schemes. A team of students and lecturers from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) is developing new technology at the Optical Communications Laboratory (OC Lab) in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering. The team hopes the new low-cost innovation can bridge the peri-urban digital divide in South Africa. Visiting rooftops in search of optimal locations to test the system is one of the perks of the job. From left are students Alice Drozdov, Victoria Bench, Keitumetsi Khoza, Blake Denham with Dr Mitchell Cox, co-founder of the Optical Communications Laboratory at Wits University. The tech has been described as a beam of light “from a fibre-connecte...
South Africans Ready to Disclose Their Online Activity to the Government
Sourced from Fintech News. Thirty-eight per cent (38%) of South African consumers say they are happy for the government to monitor their social media activity to keep its citizens safe – this is according to Kaspersky’s latest report, Social credits and security: Embracing the world of ratings. At the same time, 67% of local respondents were ready to reveal their private data in exchange for a unique offer in an online shop. However, for many consumers, it still remains unclear how these automated systems of data-driven services work: 55% of all the users participating in the poll admitted they still can’t figure it out. The growing popularity of social media networks and online services has led to a growth in social scoring systems – automated algorithms based on users’ behaviour and infl...
