IT News
5G Rollout in Kenya Escalates as Airtel Upgrades 600 Sites
Sourced from Comms MEA Airtel Kenya has upgraded over 600 sites in Nairobi, Mombasa and Malindi to ensure that they are 5G ready – this comes shortly after rival telco, Safaricom, launched the first 5G commercial services in East Africa. “These 600 sites are now 5G-ready. We don’t have to make any further modifications to the network. We will just get the spectrum and decide when to switch on,” says Prasanta Das Sarma, MD of Airtel Kenya. According to Business Daily, the new 5G network will “give consumers Internet speeds of 700 megabits per second, more than three times faster than the current 4G network, allowing operators to offer an alternative service for homes and offices in areas which are not currently covered by its fibre network”. Sarma also revealed that subscribers can hope to ...
Yahoo Answers to Shut Down in May
Image sourced from Android Headlines Yahoo Answers is officially being shut down after almost sixteen years of helping people around the world connect and share information. According to the platform’s website, it will be available in read-only mode from 20 April 2021 and officially shut down on 4 May 2021. A statement sent to active Yahoo Answers users reveals how Answers, once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, has become “less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed.” “We launched Yahoo Answers sixteen years ago to help people around the world connect and share information. With you and millions of other users, we built the best place on the web to ask and answer questions on a variety of topics, creating a community of global knowledge sharing. Wh...
Mastercard Expands Cashless Payment Functionality for Uber MEA
Mastercard has introduced a new initiative focusing on digital payments and advancing financial inclusions for Uber across the Middle East and Africa (MEA). As a regional first, the partnership with Mastercard will enable Uber to drive digitisation across their business operations, leveraging Mastercard’s single infrastructure to meet all types of payments needs across Uber Rides, Uber Eats, Uber Pass, and Uber for Business. It is intended that the partnership will boost cashless payments, drive digital payment acceptance, reward loyalty, while supporting Uber’s continued social impact collaboration. The Economy 2021 report released by Mastercard notes that the economic impact of COVID-19 has introduced permanent changes in digital consumer spending habits, growth of online banking, fintec...
Why South Africa Needs Fibre to Drive 5G Connectivity
5G is paving the way forward for the connectivity that digital technologies increasingly require, but it offers a lot more than just unprecedented mobile data connection speeds. 5G is capable of handling many more connected devices, has ten times lower latency than 4G, and enables ‘network slicing’ which can prioritise specific users, services, or devices during times of network overload. With all these benefits, it’s no surprise that many people have the misconception that 5G will ultimately replace fibre, when in fact 5G without fibre would not exist. The 5G mobile network is currently being rolled out in South Africa and will still take a few years to become widely available. Even then, 5G networks will not eventually replace fibre optic networks but rather complement them by offering m...
LG to Quit the Manufacturing and Sales of Smartphones
LG has announced that it is closing its loss-making mobile business unit – a decision approved by the board of directors. The tech company says this will allow it to “focus resources in growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services”. According to LG, it will still provide service support and software updates for customers of existing mobile products for a period of time which will vary by region and it will also work with suppliers and business partners throughout the closure of the mobile phone business. Moving forward, LG says it will continue to leverage its mobile expertise and develop mobility-related technologies such as 6G to help further streng...
Nutanix Appoints New Senior Director of Multicloud Business Development
Nutanix has announced the appointment of James Karuttykaran as Senior Director of Multicloud Business Development for EMEA. In his new role, he will be responsible for developing strategic partnerships with leading players in the public cloud. He reports directly to Andy Brewerton, Director of Sales Strategy for EMEA at Nutanix. In this new position, Karuttykaran is expected to put his expertise in Nutanix technologies to work for the company’s customers’ multicloud deployment needs. His priority will be to strengthen Nutanix’s relationship with Microsoft to facilitate the deployment of European customers’ infrastructure and workloads on Azure. Karuttykaran joined Nutanix at the creation of the French office in March 2014 as a pre-sales engineer. He quickly rose through the ranks to become...
Scaling the Tough Terrain: How to Manage Rugged Devices Deployed for Field Operations
The global demand for smartphones intended to be used for corporate purposes is at an all-time high. Considering the pandemic-driven requirements for working remotely, the organizations- be it across supply-chain, manufacturing, military or first response that earlier did not consider bringing their frontline workforce into digital transformation have been compelled to do so. The businesses that earlier employed a large number of frontline employees or field forces depended largely on the paper-pen-based model of operations. Rugged devices can be monumental in helping organizations scale the tough terrain The apprehensions against bringing the field force under digital transformation were not simply because of the foreseeable challenges the employees could face while using technology...
How AI Puts the ‘Smart’ in Smartphones
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart devices capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. From the realm of science fiction, AI has evolved to, in some applications, match human performance, with the latest facial-recognition software having a 99% accuracy rate. Strategy Analytics, a company that shares insights and analytics, states that 41% of consumers believe AI will improve their lives in some way and South Africa isn’t lagging behind the rest of the world in its development and application of this cutting-edge technology either. “We’re seeing even more companies using AI in more daring ways through innovative products or services that disrupt the status quo,’ says Dries Cronje, CEO at Deep Le...
Are University’s Doing Enough to Address the Cybersecurity Skills Gap
Sourced from International IDEA A global shortage of cybersecurity professionals has become so severe that companies are increasingly at risk from hacking and industrial espionage. Protecting data and defending corporate networks is poised to be one of the most in-demand careers of the future. Yet companies are already struggling to fill job vacancies, and the problem is accelerating. “Every company is going digital, and the first thing they have to ask is how secure are their networks and data,” says Doros Hadjizenonos, the Regional Sales Director at Fortinet. The danger is that cybercrime has grown so huge and lucrative that without enough good guys to keep them safe, businesses and individuals alike are in jeopardy. “If a company doesn’t have the right skills it’s increasing its risk to...
African’s Reluctant to Leave WhatsApp Despite Increase in Cybersecurity Concerns
Africa’s mobile users are increasingly concerned about the mobile risks and the potential for digital identity theft; however, this is not stopping them from using their favourite messaging platforms and applications. This emerged in new research carried out by KnowBe4 among smartphone users in Nigeria, Mauritius, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Morocco and Botswana. The survey gauged the opinions of Africa’s mobile users on the recent decision by WhatsApp to update their terms and conditions, sharing metadata with the rest of the Facebook group of companies. The survey found that not only did the majority of the respondents across Africa intend to continue using WhatsApp; but also, that their favourite alternative to WhatsApp was Facebook Messenger. Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy &...
Huawei FreeBuds 4i Officially Available in South Africa
Huawei’s latest addition to the FreeBuds series, the FreeBuds 4i, are now available in South Africa. The all-new True Wireless Stereo Bluetooth earphones offer users high-quality sound with long-lasting battery life, active noise cancellation and intuitive controls. With the help of customized internal components such as its 10mm dynamic, the Huawei FreeBuds 4i is capable of providing users with high-quality audio with balanced sound across various frequency ranges. Audio output is tuned professionally and the wind noise reduction structure ensures crystal clear audio at all times, even in noisy environments. The earphones also offer users 10 hours of battery life on a single charge with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) off and 7.5 hours with ANC on. Together with the charging cas...
The 3 Real Challenges of WFH
It used to be called “telecommuting”. Already the term sounds archaic and has been rapidly displaced by the broader “Work from Home (WFH)” phrase that caught fire in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses all over the world have been experimenting with telecommuting for decades, but the pandemic has woken them up to the fact that it need not remain an experiment. A Practitioner’s View Sujoy Chatterjee, VP of Infrastructure Services at ITC Infotech, says, “WFH can be a wider reality, resulting in interesting, pleasant and desirable upsides. Forward-thinking CIOs and business leaders are already working on long term strategies to support a distributed workforce, not just for full-time employees, but for part-time employees as well.” One such leader Sujoy is working with is Sibus...
