A few months ago, the CEO of MWEB, Rudi Jansen announced that a strategic decision has been made by Nasper's to "auction off MWEB" to a company that can provide MWEB with access to a network.

After months of rumours and speculation, it was announced today in a letter to the staff by Rudi Jansen announced that the sale process has been called off.

"Following months of work and endless late nights working on the sale of MWEB, I am now able to give you a final update on the process. Naspers has decided to end the formal auction process for the sale of MWEB South Africa due to current market conditions. MWEB South Africa will therefore remain within the Naspers group.

An agreement has also been concluded whereby Telkom will purchase the MWEB Africa business. This transaction will take some time to close, mainly due to regulatory approvals that are required. We expect the date of closing to be some time in quarter 1 2009."

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The Nokia N810 WiMax Edition is Nokia's super communication device! Priced at about $495, the handset is set to take the WiMax mobile market by storm!

Check out the advert for the hardcore device below:

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Sprint and Clearwire have FINALLY cleared their differences today and the FCC has given the nod of approval for the companies to hit the road running with WiMax! The partnership is set to bring broadband wireless internet to 140million users in 2 and a half years, using WiMax technologies.This is BIG news for WiMax globally! I've been part of a few fairly heated arguments about the future of WiMax and the financial viability of rolling out a WiMax network now, when we have technologies like LTE already emerging in the horizon with a grin on it's face!

To clear that up, LTE and other new technologies will always be athreat to the success of WiMax. Like all great technologies, the glory only lasts as long as the press release of the next technology is still in the mail. But the financial viability is driven by the cost of establishing the network and the cost of consumer products that use the network!

Its that simple! South Africa, you better watch this space for exciting WiMax news ;)

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Just as I finished my last Nokia article, I stumbled across another hot topic. That is the low end market. We have seen the product range go through a major storm of late with the iPhone, the Nokia E71, the HTC Touch HD, etc etc, but we really haven't seen much movement in the lower price bracket!
And this is the cue for Nokia's latest army of budget handsets. Designed specifically to target emerging markets, these handsets range in price from as little as $25 to $90! Most of them come packed with the standard features of late, MP3 playback, cameras of at least 1 Megapixel (but going up to 3Megapixels on the higher end phone), GPRS and browser functionality.

At $25, this is set to be Nokia's cheapest handset ever and it sports a monochrome screen and basic features that we have last seen on the Nokia 3300 :)

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On the back of a super successful full touch screen phone, the iPhone, we have seen just about every handset manufacturer release a touchscreen phone!

Samsungs Omnia, the new HTC Touch range is said to compete, and now.. all hail the Nokia 5300!

This is Nokia's first mainstream handset with full touchscreen functionality. Nokia does have preceding devices that were way to expensive to have taken off successfully, like the N800 Tablet and the 7700. This handset is said to be targeting the sub $400 price bracket with tweaked OS driven by Symbian S60 Version 5 (Yes, I said Version 5!) to push the multitouch screen through its paces!

All About Symbian has done an extensive review on the device and I must admit... the boys at Nokia have been really working hard lately!

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On the back of a major #Fail for Apple's iPhone in China, HTC has been very adamant to get the G1 into China by mid year 2009. The Google powered handset can already be found on the streets of China for about $580 and with the major uptake on the streets already, it only makes sense for HTC to bring it legally to the market!

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The Nokia N85 has been reported to be better than the flagship N-Series phone, the N96, by an Italian reviewer recently and I couldn't help but to first think that this Italiano was high on olives and smoking his socks!

But oh goodness is this a beast of a phone!

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A handset with detachable modules has surfaced recently. It seems that a QWERTY keyboard module can be attached for messaging and std use of the phone, a Game Pad for a full gaming experience and the 3rd module is a speaker for full multimedia playback.


The main unit seems to be fitted with a 3 inch touch screen. This is definitely a pinnacle achievement for mobile convergence!

I don't know who the handset manufacturer is, but well done guys, this looks awesome!

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Ok, this is COOL!

Japan does love 'em some mobile TV. Now that 1-Seg digital goodness has been announced for iPhone users. The 80-gram tuner provides a TV fix over WiFi and doubles as a battery extender when plugged into the iPhone 3G's dock connector. Trendy sidewalk zombies, the streets are yours. We'll update you with prices and dates when known. One more pic for size comparison after the break.

Update: Official PR with specs (no price) is now out: 3 hours continuous 1-Seg viewing, 2-/4-hours charge via AC/USB, and available mid December along side a free 1-Seg application from the AppStore.

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The Nokia E61 and E62i were evangelists in its domain, and the launch of the Nokia E71 saw the business phone grow up quite a bit. I'm a Nokia E71 owner and I absolutely love the device.

Everything from the E71 alarm clock to the Mail for Exchage integration. The design is stunning and the form factor is pure perfection. Kudos to the designers and engineers on the E71.

I guess, when you have something so close to perfection, its tough to beat it. SO the designers at Nokia must have had a real hard time coming up with something decent for the E63. But judging from the spy shots of the Nokia E63, it looks like it was designed at 4:45pm on a Friday by a Finnish designer who just bought himself a new set of colouring pencils!






<--Nokia E71 Nokia E63-->














Early reports show it as having a 320 x 240 resolution display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Symbian S60, a microSD card slot, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and UMTS / HSDPA. And judging from the pics, the keyboard has been altered slightly to include easy access to brackets and the space bar has been shortened. Good move!

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