New Vodacom credit card applications:

With immediate effect no new Vodacom credit card applications will be accepted.

Current Vodacom credit cardholders:
1. Using the Vodacom credit card
Vodacom credit cards will remain valid until the expiry date shown on the credit card or until 30 September 2010, which ever date is earlier (“the closure date”). After the closure date, transactions will no longer be able to be made (i.e. no purchase transactions or cash withdrawals). From the closure date Vodacom credit card accounts will only be able to accept payments.
Vodacom credit cardholders will receive a communication from FirstRand Bank prior to the closure date advising them of the various settlement and migration options available to them.>br/>For assistance please call 082 241 9933 (free from a Vodacom cellphone).

2. Using the benefits and rewards
Current Vodacom credit card holders, who are members of the rewards programme, will be able to earn Yebo Bucks and Cash Backs and enjoy all current discount offers until close of business on 30 April 2010.

Cardholders with valid Yebo Bucks will be entitled to redeem their Yebo Bucks at all Yebo Bucks redemption partners until close of business on 31 May 2010 and the current terms and conditions will apply.

As a gesture of goodwill, customers with unredeemed Yebo Bucks will be credited with the value of the Yebo Bucks remaining on their July Vodacom cellphone bill at the rate of 1 Yebo Buck = R1 (subject to terms and conditions).

The following terms and conditions will apply to the issuing of the Yebo Bucks credits:

• The credit will be made to the cellphone number registered as the membership number.
• The registered cellphone number must be a Vodacom number.
• If the cellphone number is a Vodacom Prepaid number, the equivalent airtime value will be credited.
• The registered cellphone number must still be active on the Vodacom network as at the date the credit is affected (1 July 2010).
• The Vodacom credit card account must be in good standing on 31 May 2010 and the credit will be made to the July cellphone bill.
• Yebo Bucks and airtime may not be exchanged for cash.
• The credits are offered by Vodacom as a gesture of goodwill and should not be construed as admission of any liability whatsoever.
• Current Yebo Bucks terms and conditions apply.

Vodacom credit card terms and conditions still apply.

ITWeb has learned from several independent sources that the company plans to move its group operations out of the country and eventually delist from the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, leaving the local business as a subsidiary of the company, or even up for sale.

MTN already has a business registered in the Middle Eastern country, which it says is the head office for its Middle East and North African operations.

However, MTN has quietly been moving several of its group operation units into Dubai, without making any local splash about the plans. It confirmed to ITWeb this morning that it has moved its technical services support team to the country. Several sources say there is a chance that its technology development division will follow.

“The planned relocation of the technical services support team to Dubai is part of the group’s ongoing response to the challenges of the changing global telecommunications industry. It is also intended to address the logistical challenge of supporting the group’s networks in the Middle East in particular, and certain parts of Africa,” MTN executive director Nozipho January-Bardill said to the Arabian Business news agency in late January, when the move happened.

In addition to the quiet moves, MTN has only responded to ITWeb’s query with a vague comment on the matter, and shied away from the delisting query entirely. However, an MTN statement confirms other group services have been relocated to Dubai.

“The MTN Group has operations in more than 24 countries, including those in which it has mobile licences. Some departments within MTN Group Management Services are based in Dubai, as part of the group’s ongoing response to the challenges of the changing global telecommunications industry. This is also intended to address the logistical challenge of supporting the operations in the Middle East, in particular, and certain parts of Africa,” January-Bardill explains in a statement.

Real Possibility

While MTN has dodged ITWeb’s queries, analysts say they have heard similar speculation, although they too have not been able to confirm if the company plans to pull out of SA. “It would be a tough nut to swallow if MTN abandoned SA,” says Dobek Pater, director of African Analysis.

Pater says there are real operational reasons why the company would move its group structure outside of SA. Dubai, as a location, is almost a midpoint between MTN’s two growing revenue earners: Iran and its West African operation, in Nigeria.

Both countries have outstripped SA in terms of growth, with Nigeria already showing income dominance for MTN in 2008. Pater says having a more northern head office could also provide it easier access to other new markets either in the Middle East or even in Southern Europe.

He says the delisting of MTN from the JSE is inevitable, and his company has heard similar speculation. “It would have happened if the Bharti deal went through anyway,” he notes. He also says the company will have an easier time without a local listing.

Chris Gilmour, an analyst at Absa Investments, agrees, saying MTN has become a massive group, and the local listing is only really hurting the business. “Every time there is a blip on the South African network, MTN’s share price takes a nosedive. It makes no sense for a company across so many countries to list here in SA,” he notes.

Gilmour says a Dubai move, coupled with a delisting of MTN, makes sense in several ways. He says the tax breaks for businesses in Dubai could be a reason it plans to move there.

He agrees with Pater, saying an operation in Dubai would give it better access to its Nigerian and Iranian operations. However, he comments there is a very real possibility that MTN might delist and sell its South African operation.

“SA is probably past its best-by date. However, its customer base will be attractive to other companies locally, for example Telkom,” he notes.

Speculation had it that either Telkom or Etisalat was poised to snap up MTN’s South African operation if the company had concluded a deal with Bharti; however, neither organisation has confirmed interest.

But Pater believes MTN SA is still a pivotal operation for the group, which means it is unlikely it will sell it.

Gilmour admits that a move from SA to Dubai could be difficult, costly and take some time. However, he adds that the company may well have completed the research on how to do it during the discussions with Bharti.

Government will not be pleased if MTN’s Dubai move comes to fruition, since it owns a 13.5% stake in the business through the Public Investment Corporation.

Source ITWeb – 19 February 2010

President Jacob Zuma today delivered his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) since taking office in May last year.  The opening of parliament coincides with the 20th anniversary of former President Nelson Mandela’s release from prison this year, creating a particularly big buzz around the event.

In his first SONA address in June last year Zuma said that Government will ensure that the cost of telecommunications is reduced through the projects underway to expand broadband capacity. “We have to ensure that we do not leave rural areas behind in these exciting developments,” Zuma added.

This year Zuma continued where he left off in 2009, promising lower telecoms rates and better broadband services. “As part of our efforts to encourage greater economic growth, we are working to reduce the cost to communicate,” said Zuma.

“The South African public can look forward to an even further reduction of broadband, cell phone, landline and public phone rates.  We will work to increase broadband speed and ensure a high standard of internet service, in line with international norms.”

Source MyBroadband – 11 February 2010

The MTN Group, which is the largest operator investor in the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), today said it is pleased with the progress being made in the construction of the cable.

A significant milestone will be achieved this weekend when the undersea cable lands in Mtunzini, on the north coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

This will be the only landing of the EASSy cable in South Africa and heralds the start of the final stage of the long process of planning, financing, designing and building this important African East Coast consortium cable system.

EASSy, a fully integrated high capacity, multi-technology network, is an undersea fibre-optic cable that will link the countries of Southern, Eastern and Northern Africa to the rest of the world through various interconnection points to the existing global submarine cable network.

When EASSy goes live at the end of June 2010 it will bring a great deal more bandwidth in the country, and should allow companies like MTN to significantly enhance its offering to its customers in South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya with much sought-after international bandwidth capacity.

MTN Group’s Trevor Martins, who is also the EASSy Management Committee Chairman, says the completion of EASSy will boost MTN’s broadband capacity and facilitate MTN’s ongoing efforts to provide its customers with the most affordable access to broadband.

“Over the past years MTN has been a pioneer in pursuing opportunities by investing in technologies, businesses and licences which enhance our delivery of services in data and internet protocol connectivity. As part of a larger strategic portfolio, EASSy is one of such investments and we are excited about the cable landing in Mtunzini. This signals significant progress in the construction of the cable after the northern part of the cable construction off the Port of Sudan,” says Martins.

“The substantial investment MTN has made in EASSy is indicative of the Group’s unwavering commitment to bridge the digital divide and offer its subscribers wider and more affordable access to broadband and telephony,” adds Martins.

At 1.4 Tbps EASSy is set to be undersea cable system in South Africa with the highest capacity to date, complimenting the 1.28 Tbps SEACOM cable and the 340/440 Gbps SAT-3/SAFE system.

Source MyBroadband – 11 February 2010

Twitter was abuzz with speculation on Sunday that PayPal would finally be gracing South Africa’s shores later this year.

PayPal is a service aimed at facilitating secure online trade and is viewed as a vital step in seeing South African web offerings become a bigger part of the global economy.

The technology allows users to shop online without revealing their credit card details. This ensures a more secure platform for online transacting and will be a step forward in promoting online trade for South African businesses.

Importantly, the service would make it easier for local retailers to receive payments from overseas customers. The technology has to date received a lukewarm reception from the South African Reserve Bank which is concerned it flaunts foreign exchange regulations.

Asked whether it would be a positive for South African technology entrepreneurs, local venture capital expert Vinny Lingham said: “Without a doubt.” It would further assist in securing online payment processing, he said.

FNB declined to comment, but Fin24.com has learned the project to introduce Paypal is advanced.

Although sources said the Twitter leaks were part of a calculated public relations exercise, FNB executives are furious news of the project broke.

Media and technology analyst Saul Kropman said in a Twitter post it would be interesting to see how the costs of using Paypal shaped up largely because only one bank appeared to be rolling out the product.

FNB has aggressively targeted the small business sector with several technology-driven solutions, including its Instant Accounting offering. Securing PayPal would be another feather in its cap, said Twitter users who added it would provide them access to an invaluable platform for their business.

Ironically, for a country that doesn’t have PayPal, the technology was developed by South African Elon Musk who matriculated from Pretoria Boys High School in 1988.

He is now CEO of US technology company (Space Exploration Technologies) SpaceX which develops technology for high-profile clients, including US space agency NASA.

Source Fin24 – 8 February 2009

Copy/Paste the following code snippet into your theme’s functions.php file:(without the quotes)

“function number_postpercat($idcat) { global $wpdb; $query = “SELECT count FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE term_id = $idcat”; $num = $wpdb->get_col($query); echo $num[0]; }“

You can edit the functions.php file by going to Appearance>>Editor in your Wordpress back-office.

You can then call the function by adding the following code snippet into your theme wherever you need to do the count:(without the quotes)

“<?php number_postpercat (4); ?>“

The result will be something like: Wordpress Themes(19) | Wordpress Plugins(21) etc.

The sample number “(4)” above is the Wordpress category ID.

I hope that this will save someone else some valuable time.

I am not a firm believer of installing all kinds of fancy software on my computer so I ended up figuring out a way of setting up the whole lot manually and even somewhat automatically. That way I know that I am in control and not some fancy software or online solution.

For this illustration I am using Mozilla Thunderbird, Gmail and my Nokia E63. The basic procedure is very much the same in MS Outlook and on other brands of cellphones.

My procedure is as follows:

In Thunderbird go to Tools–>Address Book.

Once the address book is open, select the address book that you want to export. Select Tools–>Export and you will be represented with a new window asking you where you want to save the file and in which format. Usually it’s the easiest to export it to your desktop. Select to export the file in Comma Separated Value (CSV) and save the file.

Now open Gmail and select “Contacts” from the left menu.

Once the contacts page is open choose “Import” on the top right of the page.

You will now be presented with a page where you can click on the “choose file” button. Once you have clicked on this button, Windows Explorer will open. In Windows Explorer, navigate to your desktop folder and find the CSV file that you have saved earlier and select and open it. You can now click the import button on your Gmail page. Once the import has been done, Gmail will report the amount of contacts that has been imported and you can click on OK to see a list of the imported contacts.

You now have a permanent backup copy of all your contacts in your Gmail account in case of a computer crash. In case of the latter, you can always go back to your Gmail “contacts” folder and export your list of contacts and import them back into your desktop email application. It is also important to note that you have to perform the above procedure from time to time to keep your Gmail address book updated.

Next step is to synchronise your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar with your cellphone. I always save all my appointments on my Google Calendar seeing that you can setup Google Calendar to notify you of your appointments by Email, SMS or both. In the case of my specific phone (Nokia E63) I had to install “Nokia Mail For Exchange”, a free application. Google support instructions for the various phones are available here.

Once you have setup your cellphone, it will synchronize your calendar and your contacts on (in my case) a daily basis, automatically.

For me this process of synchronisation and backup works perfectly, being a person not liking too many third-party applications on my computer or cellphone. This process is seamless and streamlined and, best of all, it’s free! At the end of the day this process involves about 5% of manual work and 95% of automation. To me that is close enough to a 100% seeing that it doesn’t cost me a cent and it works well.

Please feel free to contribute and share about how you prefer handling this process.