Telkom is to make a cash offer to buy out all of Business Connexion’s (BCX’s) shares. The value of the deal will be about R2,7-billion. As one of the largest ICT and cloud service providers on the JSE, BCX has offices in the UK and Dubai as well as in South Africa.

Telkom has announced plans to roll out fibre to the home (FTTH) connectivity to more than 20 South African suburbs before the end of 2014. It will also deliver high speed home LTE connectivity to other suburbs across the country. The home LTE rollout will enable peak connectivity speeds of up to 100Mbps.

The South African IT industry is this week abuzz with reports about senior management changes at HP SA. It has been confirmed that Frank van Rees, country manager and Enterprise Group lead, will be leaving the local operation and returning to Europe.

Pinnacle Holdings stock continued to slide on the back of the news that an executive director stands accused of bribery. Takalani Tshivhase is alleged to have offered a lieutenant-general of the South African Police Service R5-million in January last year to secure a technology contract.

IT salaries have increased by about 20% over the last year. This is one of the findings revealed by CareerJunction’s recent Salary Review, compiled its online labour market indicator, the CareerJunction Index (CJI).

As fraud and corruption in the ICT industry reach endemic proportions, there are calls for an independent body to bring stakeholders together in a bid to chart how widespread the problem is, and to thrash out a solution. That corruption is a problem is, sadly, beyond doubt – and industry leaders believe it may be so much a part of the ICT industry’s culture that we are close to the point of no return.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has pictured a rock on the Mars surface – on a piece of ground where a previous photograph showed nothing. Before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a bright rock on to the scene.

Motorists across South Africa have been receiving e-mails and SMSes demanding payment for outstanding accounts for using Sanral’s controversial e-toll highway system – but they should beware of phishing scams dressed up to look like Sanral demands.

If you have had anything to do with technology in the past three months, chances are that you have come across the Internet of Things (IoT). In effect, this refers to how every device and appliance will be connected to the Internet to significantly change the way we interact with the technology around us.

Benjamin Mophatlane, CEO of Business Connexion, has died. Mophatlane, 41 years old, succumbed to a heart attack during an afternoon meeting with Telkom. Together with his twin brother Isaac, Mophatlane formed what was then known as Business Connection in 1996.