Convergence Partners is an investment management and advisory firm, focused on the telecommunications, media and technology sector in emerging markets, with a principal focus on Africa.

    Selected Tag > South Africa

Why wireless companies should care about Local Loop Unbundling

October 11th, 2011 | admin
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Rico du Pessis, Chief Operating Officer of Communications Solutions (Comsol), argues that local loop unbundling will contribute to improving the competitive communications landscape in South Africa, but the process to ensure this happens may be through the courts and not the regulator.

This is important not only for wireless companies, but all South Africans passionate about getting cheaper connectivity to all. Rico says: “the legislative framework exists for ECS and ECNS license holders to get wholesale and non-discriminatory access to the local loop, as well as other facilities, (like masts, poles and radio apparatus) yet I feel that it will take a court action before we will see broad application of this process.”

Seacom continues African expansion in Mozambique and Zimbabwe

June 24th, 2011 | admin
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Convergence Partners investee company, Seacom has signed a master services agreement with Telecomunicações de Moçambique (TDM), the leading telecommunications service provider in Mozambique, which gives it access to the largest and most distributed fibre optic network in Mozambique as well as a diverse route into Zimbabwe and additional border presence into Malawi and South Africa.

FibreCo launches its new website! www.fibreco.co.za

April 15th, 2011 | admin
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Convergence investee FibreCo is pleased to announce that its new website is live! Please visit them on www.fibreco.co.za
Established in 2009 as a joint venture between Convergence Partners, Cell C, and Internet Solutions, FibreCo is deploying a state-of-the-art fully managed long-haul fibre optic terrestrial network across South Africa.

Hopeville wins two SAFTA awards and receives nine nominations at the 2011 African Movie Academy Awards

March 15th, 2011 | admin
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The Hopeville feature film, which was released nationally in South Africa in September 2010, has been making in-roads at the international film festivals and awards events.

Hopeville is a film produced by Heartlines, which is a beneficiary of the Convergence Partners Foundation.

Communications Minister and leaders of ICT industry meet on growth and jobs

March 1st, 2011 | admin
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On Friday 25 February 2011, Communications Minister Roy Padayachie met with the leaders of 30 of SA’s top ICT players to discuss cooperation between government and private sector in order to create jobs and enhance growth. Chairman of Convergence Partners and Dimension Data, Andile Ngcaba, attended the roundtable discussions, which were aimed at developing a 2020 vision for the South African ICT sector. Andile noted that applications and software are central to the ICT ecosystem and that opportunities exist for innovation and development in these fields. The potential for job creation opportunities would also arise from the production of new set top boxes, required for migration to digital television signal distribution in South Africa.

SkillPod’s casual gaming platform off to a cracking start!

February 7th, 2011 | admin
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“If the first month of 2011 is anything to go by, then the rest of the year is going to be an incredible one” according to Mark van Diggelen – CEO of online and mobile casual gaming business, SkillPod Media, in which Convergence Partners has a strategic equity investment. “We’ve just completed a 7 month period of R&D, where we redeveloped our online and Facebook casual games platforms, adding a host of new features targeted at personalisation, customisation and monetisation.” As a result of this development the response from new and existing clients has been incredibly positive, with 20 new projects already confirmed. These include a number of new casual games portal deployments in the Middle East (these sites have been fully customised to cater for the Arabic language and the reading of content from right to left), UK, USA, Vietnam, Europe and South Africa.

Convergence Partners gets into the fever of the soccer world cup and supports Bafana Bafana 100% – Ke Nako

June 4th, 2010 | admin
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Convergence Partners gets into the fever of the soccer world cup and supports Bafana Bafana 100% – Ke Nako. Ever since its announcement as host nation on the 15th of May 2004, the country has been busy preparing itself to host thousands of players and supporters from all over the world. Convergence Partners has been counting down the days and is 100% behind Bafana Bafana.

Fibre Optics take home Physics Nobel Prize

November 24th, 2009 | admin
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Seacom, the first undersea cable providing fibre connectivity to the East Africa, is enabling affordable access to the internet to millions of people.