internet Archives

Corbyn vs May vs Twitter: UK elects a hung parliament, the internet reacts
By Julia Breakey on 9 June, 2017
Yesterday, the United Kingdom voted in their snap election called for by Prime Minister Theresa May. May, who was hoping to increase her Conservative Party's majority in the House of Commons, has seen the opposite take effect and the UK are now looking at a hung parliament. Their biggest opposition, the Labour Party, has gained 29 seats, assuring that the Conservatives do not have a house majority despite their lead. This could lead to May's resignation. Naturally, the liberal-leaning Twittersphere took to this news quite well. When the Brexit clock is ticking, you blow £143000000 of taxpayer money on a snap election after years of austerity,...
Theresa May wants more stringent internet regulations after London attack
By Julia Breakey on 5 June, 2017
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has called for stricter internet regulations after seven people were killed in a terrorist attack in London Saturday. In a statement following the attack, May acknowledged that there was no connection between the planning of this attack with the one in Westminster Abbey in March, or Manchester last month. She follows that the UK is facing a "new trend" of copycat terrorists who merely need to watch the news to learn how to plan a successful attack. May looks specifically at the internet for quelling these kinds of copycats. "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it...

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Afrihost cuts price of fibre packages in wake of Openserve announcement
By Andy Walker: Editor on 24 May, 2017
South African internet service provider (ISP) Afrihost has today announced that it will cut the prices of its fibre packages. This moves comes after the recent reduction in IPC costs announced by Telkom's Openserve division. "Depending on the IPC capacity purchased, ISPs can now benefit from price reductions of up to 32%, effective from 1 June 2017," Openserve wrote in a release issued earlier this month. Afrihost is one of the first ISPs to adopt the decreased costs, and plans to reduce the "monthly costs of all Openserve fibre packages to pass this saving onto all current and future clients," the...
Openserve IPC rate cut could mean more data for your buck [Update]
By Hadlee Simons on 18 May, 2017
Telkom's wholesale company, Openserve, has announced an IP Connect price cut of up to 32%. "Depending on the IPC capacity purchased, ISPs can now benefit from price reductions of up to 32%, effective from 1 June 2017," the wholesale division wrote in a statement. "We are committed to our journey of making broadband more affordable in South Africa. We firmly believe that by stimulating the growth of fixed broadband in South Africa, we are contributing to economic growth," said sales and marketing chief Prenesh Padayachee. The Openserve IP connect price cut of up to 32% should filter down to consumers in the...

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Facebook’s plan to connect the world includes this record-breaking tech
By Andy Walker: Editor on 20 April, 2017
It's difficult to keep up with Facebook's slew of announcements from its F8 conference this week. But at least it plans to make it easier in the future. The company updated developers and consumers on its connectivity plans going forward -- a sphere of Facebook's development model that's perhaps one of its more exciting. And no, not entirely because it's geeky as hell. New developments in its MMW radio tech means that citizens of Earth might soon be able to bury the word "buffer" in the future. Facebook pushes 80Gbps through its radio network Alongside improvements to its inner city internet connectivity trials...

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Move aside .com: Africa will soon have its own top-level domain
By Staff Reporter on 30 March, 2017
Africa will soon have its very own top-level domain on the internet. ICANN, a non-profit better known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers, has this week finalised dates and the launch schedule for the newly-approved .africa (or dotAfrica) domain. .africa will be a brand new top-level domain for the entire continent, and will aim to "forge a unique online identity which will associate your products, services and/or information with the continent and people of Africa", a press release reads. This is great news for the likes of startups, the African Union (who also endorses the move), and other African...
FibreTiger: find fibre deals with this handy tool
By Hadlee Simons on 17 January, 2017
A new website, dubbed FibreTiger, now allows South Africans to find the best bang for their fibre buck. FibreTiger was launched last month and lets users compare fibre pricing and other details, making for a rather practical tool. The website features sliders for desired pricing and minimum line speed, as well as toggles for uncapped/capped data, desired ISPs and networks. Founder Jacques du Rand told Memeburn that the website started out as a side-project, being borne out of the frustration of comparing various fibre services. But it's seen a lot of attention already, he added. "Our traffic has more than doubled week on week and the...
After Trump win, internet to get Canadian mirror (kind of)
By Hadlee Simons on 30 November, 2016
The US election has forced tech companies and other entities to look closely at their operations, owing to the imminent Trump administration coming into power. At least one pivotal entity, the non-profit Internet Archive, has taken to creating an insurance policy in Canada, in the form of a mirror. The Internet Archive is behind the landmark Wayback Machine, a service which charts the internet's history and has already saved billions of URLs. The Wayback Machine sees between 300 million and 750 million webpages being saved every week, capturing old articles and forgotten websites. In other words, creating a mirror won't be a trivial task...
Update: DDoS attack on Dyn DNS leaves internet crippled
By Andy Walker: Editor on 22 October, 2016
Update #5, 22 October, 12.30am: Dyn has issued its lengthiest update yet, revealing a few more details about the DDoS attack on its DNS service. "On Friday October 21, 2016 at approximately 11:10 UTC, Dyn came under attack by a large Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against our Managed DNS infrastructure in the US-East region," the update reads. "Customers affected may have seen regional resolution failures in US-East and intermittent spikes in latency globally. Dyn’s engineers were able to successfully mitigate the attack at approximately 13:20 UTC, and shortly after, the attack subsided." "At roughly 15:50 UTC a second DDoS attack...

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South Africa’s media landscape: what will 2020 hold?
By Hadlee Simons on 11 October, 2016
A new PwC report has laid out predictions for the South African media and entertainment landscape by 2020. Entertainment and media (E&M) companies saw double digit growth of 10.6% in the country in 2015, according to the 2016 Entertainment and Media Outlook report. However, it predicts a compound annual growth rate of 6.6% to 2020 -- still edging out the USA and Western Europe's growth levels. PwC cited two reasons for the slower rate of growth. "First, with mobile internet penetration in particular now being more mature -- at 44.8% in 2015, from just 14.6% in 2011 -- internet access revenue growth will slow. Second,...

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#datamustfall: Afrihost Mobile offers R1/250MB promotion
By Hadlee Simons on 23 September, 2016
In the wake of the #datamustfall social media campaigns, MVNO Afrihost Mobile has stepped up to the plate with a promotion. The network has announced a special of 250MB of mobile data every month for a once-off fee of R1. "If you use up all of your 250MB in the month you will automatically be capped. You will never pay us another cent unless you choose to buy extra data," Afrihost wrote on its website. It's interesting to note that Afrihost Mobile piggybacks off the MTN network It's not a permanent move though, with the promotion set to run until January 2017. Still, 250MB a...
Telkom Mobile revises uncapped LTE throttling policy
By Hadlee Simons on 20 September, 2016
Telkom Mobile has announced a revised fair usage policy (FUP) for uncapped LTE users, following negative publicity on social media. Users who had allegedly fallen foul of Telkom Mobile's FUP expressed frustration after being throttled to extremely slow speeds. Now, the network has announced an overhaul of its policy for uncapped users, giving them an extra 100GB of full-speed data before throttling comes into effect. "This means that customers would have to use in excess of 300GB of data per month before Telkom's FUP will be applied. Telkom has also included an additional 50GB data allocation for peer-to- peer services such as BitTorrent and...
Fast internet for all, 5G everywhere by 2025 – EU
By Hadlee Simons on 15 September, 2016
The European Commission has announced a few rather ambitious connectivity targets for 2025. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that the internet connectivity proposals will encourage funding in high-speed networks and improve public access to WiFi. "We need to be connected. Our economy needs it. People need it. And we have to invest in that connectivity now," Junker said during his State of the Union Address. The EU is calling for fast public WiFi and 5G along transport routes The first proposal calls for all "socio/economic drivers" to have access to 1Gbps internet connectivity. So this means schools, universities, transport hubs and public service providers are...
Stream ripping now a bigger issue than illegal downloads
By Hadlee Simons on 14 September, 2016
Torrent groups and downloads have traditionally been the biggest thorn in the music industry's side, but it looks like stream-ripping is the industry's new arch-nemesis According to the Music Consumer Insight Report 2016, over a third of internet users (35%) access unlicensed content on the internet. The report, which was conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), found that traditional illegal downloads were waning in favour of stream-ripping. Who needs torrent sites when stream ripping is a thing? "Infringement is changing, with half (49%) of 16 to 24 year olds stream ripping from sites like YouTube," read an excerpt of...
Telkom ‘sabotage’: Over 13 000 customers affected
By Hadlee Simons on 22 August, 2016
Telkom has revealed more details on what it calls wide-scale sabotage of its network, saying that 13 200 customers were affected by the outages. On Friday, Telkom announced a R500 000 reward for information related to "a series of acts of sabotage" across its network. At the time, it said that facilities in Midrand, Silverton, Pretoria West, Pinetown, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Makhado and Messina were all affected. Related: Telkom offering R500k reward after countrywide ‘senseless sabotage’ The network has issued an update on the matter, revealing the scale of damage and repairs. "A total of 85 street distribution cabinets (SDCs) have been damaged in...