Thursday, November 21African Digital Business Magazine

Tag: ICT

Satcom Direct joins forces with McQ to launch groundbreaking Video Bandwidth Agility Kit
Tech

Satcom Direct joins forces with McQ to launch groundbreaking Video Bandwidth Agility Kit

New tech streams HD video in reduced bandwidth BLOS applications SD Government, the satellite communications provider for global governments, has teamed with advanced surveillance systems experts, McQ, to add the SD Video Bandwidth Agility Kit (VBAK) to its expanding portfolio of services. Delivering near real-time high-definition video over low bandwidth in beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) applications for military and civilian government customers, the VBAK is a breakthrough technology for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and search and rescue (SAR) missions. With its clarity, speed, and multiple-platform capabilities, it is transforming fixed-wing, helicopter, and UAV operations with reduced weight and size limitations. The VBAK internal compact SD WiFi Hub router and ...
South Africa News, Tech

As SA’s ICT sector looks to globalise, employers and practitioners are in search of the right skills

The number of South African employers reporting they are recruiting ICT skills overseas has increased dramatically in the past year – up from 38% to over 50%. This is a key finding in the 2022 JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey – the 12th to carried out by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), with the support of the Information Technology Association (ITA). The study’s authors, Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, describe the growing trend to recruit foreign skills as “disturbing, given the continuing high levels of unemployment in South Africa”. With pressures on business margins making emplo...
Tech

New study reveals how digital technologies are shaping the global recovery

Latest Network Readiness Index ranks world’s most ‘network ready’ markets The latest results and rankings of the Network Readiness Index (NRI) were released today by the Portulans Institute, revealing how countries around the world are leveraging information technologies to emerge from the COVID pandemic and become ‘network ready’. This latest edition – the third compiled by the Portulans Institute since taking over the Index from the World Economic Forum in 2019 – ranks a total of 130 global economies based on their performance across 60 variables. STL, the industry leading integrator of digital networks, is the NRI’s official knowledge partner. The findings are included in a new report published this month, ‘Shaping the Global Recovery: How digital technologies can help make the post-C...
Business, South Africa News, Tech

Navigating a hybrid work environment – how can businesses remain secure?

By Quentyn Taylor, Director of Information Security at Canon for Europe, Middle East and Africa A central office has typically been most business’s default working location, but the role of the office has significantly changed over the last year. Today, over 90% of organisations say they’ll allow employees to work remotely, at least part of the time, going forward. Changes that were brought about in haste to deal with the pandemic are crystallising into permanent fixtures. The expectation is that employees will have the freedom to move between multiple working environments and connect to a company’s network from each one. But this shift to a hybrid working model poses potential security risks for your organisation and employees. Your business’s network perimeter has evolved to not only...
Tech

Over Half World’s Population Now Using Mobile Internet

But More Work Needs to be Done to Bridge the Digital Divide  GSMA Research Shows 3.4 Billion People Do Not Use Mobile Internet Despite Living in Areas with Mobile Broadband Coverage   The GSMA has launched its global State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2021 showing that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of the world’s population is now using the mobile internet. Mobile internet usage translates to just over 4 billion connected people,  225 million more compared to 2019, and up from a third of people globally just six years ago. Even with this impressive growth in mobile internet connectivity, both in terms of mobile internet coverage and usage, the report highlights that work must accelerate to bridge the digital divide. Of the 3.8 billion people who remain uncon...
South Africa News, Tech

Remote work a win for SA ICT professionals

The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it some unexpected benefits for the South African ICT sector, including increased productivity and the potential for employers to reduce their operating costs. This is one of the findings in the first South African ICT Skills Survey to be carried out since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA). The JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey assesses skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective, to identify the most pressing skills needs and current skills capacity. The 2021 edition of the survey also set out to assess the impact the pandemic has had on ICT skills in South Africa...
Agriculture

Avanti Communications and Clear Blue Technologies partner to deploy rural connectivity across sub-Saharan Africa

Expected to deliver rural network coverage for up to 400 million of the unconnected over the next 3-5 years    London, July 15, 2021 - Avanti Communications (“Avanti”), the leading provider of high throughput satellite capacity across EMEA, today announces a partnership with Clear Blue Technologies International Inc. (“Clear Blue”) (TSXV: CBLU) (FRA:0YA) (OTCQB: CBUTF), the Smart Off-Grid™ company, to enable Mobile Network Operators and Telco Tower Companies to deliver rural network coverage to areas across sub-Saharan Africa. Within the next three to five years, the partnership is expected to deliver mobile network coverage to the 400 million people that currently cannot access mobile broadband services. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to become one of the largest telecom markets in the wo...
Tech

Ericsson Mobility Report: Sub-Saharan Africa to reach 70 million 5G subscriptions by 2026

Discernible volumes of 5G subscriptions are expected from 2022, reaching 7 percent in 2026.  By the end of 2026, Sub-Saharan Africa will have around 70 million 5G subscriptions  Consumers will have added an average of 3.4 online services to their daily online activities by 2025  Ericsson recently unveiled two reports that, together, forecast the post-pandemic world and the future of 5G in Sub-Saharan Africa and around the world.  Ericsson projects that 5G mobile subscriptions will exceed 580 million by the end of 2021, driven by an estimated one million new 5G mobile subscriptions every day. The forecast, which features in the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, confirms the expectation that 5G will become the fastest adopted mobile generation. 5G is expected to surpass a billion subscri...
South Africa News, Tech

TinSky Connect is Now Offering Intelsat FlexMove, the Industry-first Land Mobile Managed Service for Ubiquitous, High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) Connectivity

TinSky Connect (PTY) LTD today announced that it is now offering the Intelsat FlexMove managed service for ubiquitous, high-speed  connectivity. With FlexMove, TinSky Connect’s customers can easily connect to the internet, private data networks and cloud services from virtually anywhere in the world, including while on-the-move, or on-the-pause at a temporary site. “With the Intelsat FlexMove service, we can help our customers quickly and easily deploy mission-critical communications and maintain a seamless connection to the people and applications they rely on,” said TinSky’s Executive Director, Alan Geldenhuys. The TinSky Group is excited to partner with Intelsat to offer an industry-first high-throughput, ubiquitous connectivity solution.” The “always-on” FlexMove connect...
Tech

GSMA Study Reveals That The Gender Gap In Mobile Internet Use Is Shrinking, Despite The Onset Of The Covid-19 Pandemic

An estimated 112 million more women started using mobile internet last year across low- and middle-income countries, despite the onset of COVID-19, according to the fourth annual GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report published today. Nevertheless, 234 million fewer women than men access mobile internet. Moreover, the underlying gender gap in mobile ownership persists and is proving difficult to close. Affordability, lack of literacy and digital skills, and lower awareness of mobile internet are critical and common barriers for women. Structural inequalities in society and discriminative social norms also remain a challenge. Even when women have the same levels of education, income, literacy, and employment as men, they are still less likely to own a mobile phone or use mobile internet. The rep...