Comsol CEO Iain Stevenson Comsol has begun selling wholesale access to a national 5G network purpose-built for home broadband, backed by a multibillion-rand fundraising round and a shareholder overhaul that has seen Nedbank Private Equity exit the company after nine years. Its backed by heavy-hitters, including Richard Came, one of the early investors in the…
I have spent 28 years in African telecommunications watching operators compete for customers. The playbook has been consistent: build the network, own the spectrum and control the customer. The assumption underneath all of it is that the company with the infrastructure wins. Capitec is about to test that assumption in the fixed broadband market, and…
Herotel will introduce Amazon’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband service to South Africa under the brand name Evry, aiming for a commercial launch in 2027. CEO Van Zyl Botha confirmed that Herotel will serve as the importer of record, absorbing foreign currency risks on hardware terminals while maintaining stable retail pricing over an initial three-year…
Despite missing its annual target, BBI delivered a stronger-than-expected final quarter, generating revenue of R290 million. State-owned broadband infrastructure provider Broadband Infraco (BBI) ended the 2025/26 financial year below its revenue target despite a strong fourth-quarter recovery. The company says the loss of a major customer contract and delays to key government connectivity projects weighed…
A Starlink terminal in the remote Kalahari. Image: Jannie van Zyl On Monday, South Africa’s communications regulator gave prospective satellite operators an unusually candid piece of advice: if you want to run a constellation service such as Starlink in this country, do not expect a new network licence from us – go and buy one…
Communications department director-general Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani Government’s flagship broadband programme, SA Connect, was effectively frozen for most of the past financial year after funding the communications department had been counting on failed to arrive on time – with the in-year allocation collapsing from an expected R1.1-billion to just R116-million. Communications & digital technologies director-general Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani…
Communications minister Solly Malatsi. Image: DCDT The merger between state-owned signal distributor Sentech and Broadband Infraco (BBI) – the ailing fibre wholesaler meant to serve as South Africa’s “carrier of carriers” – has been pushed out to the 2028/2029 financial year, more than a decade after the idea was first put forward. The updated plan,…
Capitec Bank’s mobile virtual network operator, Capitec Connect, more than doubled its net income contribution to R442-million in the year to 28 February 2026, as subscribers, data traffic and voice minutes all surged. The Cell C-hosted operator, which launched in late 2022, reported 1.5 million clients active in the past three months of the reporting…
South Africa’s broadband market is shifting toward fixed wireless growth. (Image created using ChatGPT) Fixed wireless access (FWA) is increasingly gaining ground in South Africa’s broadband mix, emerging as a fast-scaling alternative alongside fibre. This, as local operators respond to the rising demand for household connectivity. A new Opensignal report shows how competition is intensifying…
South Africa’s broadband access market is expected to reach R82.8-billion in revenue by 2029, with 3.7 million new active subscriptions, according to the latest SA Broadband Report from ICT analyst firm BMIT. The headline growth rate – a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% – is driven overwhelmingly by the residential market, where both fibre-to-the-home…
