New mobile service providers 8ta has announced the availability of BlackBerry Prepaid Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) vouchers.

The new prepaid BIS vouchers from 8ta will give you access to Blackberry Internet Services and free Airtime for the period of 6 months for only R600 once off.

BlackBerry Internet Services is a easy to use and low cost solutions for those wanting access to internet, email and social networking, making it ideal for the youth of today that needs to constantly connected. With the new prepaid BIS vouchers parents can be rest assured that their children will not run out of airtime while surfing the net and there is no need to take out a contract, ensuring no bill shocks at the end of each month.

The prepaid BlackBerry Internet Services vouchers from 8ta is valid for 6 months and will give you R600 worth of airtime, free BIS subscription valued at R59pm, 500mb of free YouTube streaming, and the ability to get 50 free sms message each day when you send 5 sms messages. You will also earn free minutes after the first 3 seconds of each received call.

The BlackBerry prepaid BIS vouchers is obtainable from any 8ta flagship stores, Telkom Direct stores, Edcon and Altech Autopage, and can be used in conjuction with a Prepaid tariff and any other active bundle, be it SMS, data or other. Once the voucher expire you’ll have the option to migrate to another Prepaid tariff plan and to keep your existing BIS.

MWEB launched their Free The Web initiative last year just before they stunned the market with the introduction of cheap affordable uncapped Internet, now the company is using their initiative to get to the next step in affordable Internet in South Africa.

MWEB’s Free the Web (FTW) initiative has taken up the cause of Naked ADSL, calling on South Africans to take a stand and add their vote to remove mandatory landline billing with ADSL lines. Currently if you request a ADSL line from Telkom you are required to take out a land line as well, this adds an additional fee to your account even if you are not interested in making phone calls.

“Since a landline is not required for ADSL connectivity, Naked ADSL calls for Telkom to unbundle landlines from ADSL lines, ensuring that ADSL customers who don’t want a telephone line don’t end up having to pay for one unnecessarily,” says Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP.

Hershaw further added “The FTW initiative has therefore taken up the call for Naked ADSL. South Africans can visit theFreeTheWebSA facebook page, watch a quick video which explains the concept and campaign, and show their support for Naked ADSL via an Appeal Mosaic”

You can pledge your support for Naked ADSL by joining the Facebook Page and signing the petition.

Last night in a hanger at Lanseria airport, Telkom launched South Africa’s fourth mobile network operator 8ta. The past couple of months we saw numerous advertisements about Heita!, although rumor had it that Telkom was behind it no one was certain until now.

Telkom certainly means business with its new 8ta mobile network by offering prices that undercuts competitors by a large margin, and making it really affordable to phone to landlines from mobile phones.

8ta already has 800 base station constructed across the country and plans to add another 3200 over time to improve its network coverage. And although 8ta only has 800 base station it already has full national coverage thanks to its roaming agreement with MTN.

When it comes to broadband the Telkom 8ta network supports HSPA and is capable of download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and can be upgraded to support 21Mbps in future.

Now for the pricing everybody has been waiting for. 8ta will initially only launch a prepaid offering to the market with a post paid offering to follow withing the next few months with low-end, feature phones and smartphones from all the major manufacturers.

Calls from 8ta to Telkom and Neotel landline phones will cost the consumer 65c per minute while calls to cellular phones on any other local cellphone networks will cost R1.50 per minute. In addition to the lower rates, 8ta will offer consumers 1 second free airtime for every 3 seconds they talk. Also calls from 8ta to over 100 international destinations will cost consumers a flat rate of R2.50 per minute.

Good news for SMS fanatics is that SMS messages from the 8ta network will cost 50c per message but for the first 5 SMS messages you send on a day you will receive 50 free additional SMS messages to use for that day.

Internet on the 8ta network will cost R1 per megabyte for out of bundle data with prepaid data bundles available from as low as 25c per megabyte. Prepaid data bundles available at launch are as follows:

1. 100MB for R50
2. 250MB for R100
3. 500MB for R150
4. 1GB for R250

Things are looking good for Telkom with their 8ta mobile offering, but if consumers will switch over only time will tell. Telkom does not have a great reputation when it comes to customer service and this may be held against them.

What do you think? Will you be giving 8ta a try?

A lot of you may have noticed all the recent Heita advertisements on TV and in public and wondered what it is all about. Techcentral unraveled all earlier today.

Heita! That will be the new brand under which Telkom will launch its new Mobile Broadband offering to the public on 14 October 2010.

Heita! will only be the brand name under which Telkom will provide mobile services to consumers while sticking to a more traditional name with Telkom in it for business offerings.

It looks like Telkom has embraced social media with its new Heita brand when you have a look at the new Heita website. It features a twitter feed keeping track of the keyword #heita as well as a blog feed that shows the latest blog posts with the Heita keyword in them. Apart from the streams the Heita website also features Wallpapers and Videos of its advertisement campaigns.

With Cell C that recently announced its new HSPA+ mobile broadband data at prices starting from R34 per GB it would be interesting to see at what Telkom’s Heita mobile offering will be priced.

Telkom started roll out of its 10Mbps ADSL network the past weekend. The upgrade of about 19000 4Mbps ADSL subscribers to 10Mbps started on Friday at round about 8PM and will last up to 7 days to complete.

Users that are approximately 1.5KM from the exchange can expect to be upgraded to the higher 10Mbps speeds while other users further away will be bumped up to 8Mbps. Should you not be able to sync at these speeds Telkom will try and sync at lower speeds decreasing at 1Mbps each try.

Apparently the 10Mbps upgrade is only available to current Telkom 4Mbps users that are on the new Metro-Ethernet and ADSL2+ exchanges, where these exchanges are located is unknown but according to reports on the MyBroadband forums users are being upgraded in certain areas of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria.

The big question on everyone’s’ lips are still will lower-end users also be upgraded to higher packages like Telkom did previously with the upgrade from 192Kbps to 386Kbps? And also will the 512Kbps user again be left out?

Have your line been upgraded to 10Mbps yet? To find out if your line has been upgraded to 10Mbps head on over to SpeedTest.Net and do a speed test or log into your router and check the speeds at which your line is syncing.

Telkom must surely be feeling the pressure since MWEB stunned the local ADSL market by introducing cheap uncapped Accounts, and with Afrihost offering 1GB ADSL bundles for a mere R29 per GB doesn’t make it easier for them also.

Telkom unveiled their new Do Broadband packages and prices, but its not that a big improvement. Prices stay the same with just increased bundle sizes, and their attempt at lowering top-up prices is disgusting.

Telkom Internet subscribers will from 1 August 2010 see their packages increase with a few GB and top-up prices will drop to R49 per GB, still way above the R29 per GB offering we are used to nowadays from ISPs like Afrihost.

Telkom is yet to announce pricing of their new 10Mbps service, and there are allot of questions regarding whether Telkom will automatically upgrade current 4Mbps users like they did in the past with 1Mbps users, or if the new 10Mbps service will cost extra.

Still I feel Telkom’s attempt at reducing ADSL prices is pathetic, what’s your thoughts on the price reduction?

@pigeonrace2009 was born due to the mere fact that Telkom is useless when it comes to internet in South Africa.

Neil the man behind the Pigeon Race idea was getting realy frustrated with the slow speed and unreliable lines that the company he is working for is using to transfer large files between satallite call centres. This made him think about a april fools paper he read a while back about using carrier pigeons as a network layer.

This all got Neil thinking about how long it takes to transfer large amounts of files in South Africa over standard ADSL line, and how fast it can be done using carrier pigeons. After discussing it with his CIO, Pigeon Race 2009 became a reality.

Basically they will be flying a pigeon with a 4GB micro SD card from Howick to their central site in Hillcrest. They did a dry run. Here is the stats: Pigeon took 48 minutes to deliver the data. ADSL is still downloading. Telkom got hold of this via the media and is currently in a flat spin. They got a call from Telkom asking them for their circuit numbers so they can make sure they have good service.

Now for the best part, tranfering the data through ADSL circuit is costing them +- R45 000 per month, now if they moved to Avain Carrier Pigeons they will be saving a whopping R35 000 per month.

If you would like to support Neil and Winston the Carrier Pigeon go check out their site, follow them on twitter or search for Winston on Facebook. You can also buy a very nice shirt from springleap to show your support.