Eskom’s taking us for a hike

It’s not as though Eskom is coming out of left field with this one. These plans have been in the works since early 2023 when The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) approved a massive 33.77% tariff increase split over two years. 2023 took the brunt of the hike — swallowing an 18.65% increase, while 2024’s residential homepower rates will be going up by 12.74% in April.

Had the Democratic Alliance (DA) been successful in its attempts to thwart Nersa’s approved increase, we might’ve been sitting with far lower prices. The DA described the two-year 33.77% increase as “astronomical”, noting that the hike had the potential to price electricity out of many South African residents’ incomes.

When it attempted to get the High Court involved, it dismissed the case — ruling in favour of Nersa’s hike.

“All relevant factors have properly and in detail been considered, the conclusions reached were neither arbitrary nor irrational and the issue of cross-subsidisation was considered at the appropriate stage,” the High Court judgement stated. “The High Court, therefore, found that both the review applications of the DA and SALGA (The South African Local Government Association) must fail.”

Read More: How to find out if you qualify for Free Basic Electricity in South Africa, and how it works

After the 12.74% comes into effect next month, it’ll bring the tariff up to 195.95c/kWh — up from 2023’s 173.8c/kWh. But how will that affect your bottom line on your bill come April? Well, it depends. Houses that use, on average, 600kWh per month will see an extra R168.24 no matter which Homepower tariff they are on.

Bringing that up to 900kWh of electricity each month, residents in the Homepower 1 bracket will pay an extra R398.52, while those in the Homepower 2 and 3 brackets will see a R388.53 increase. Homepower 4 customers have a R405.81 increase to look forward to.

Eskom customers that use around 1,200kWh/m are looking at an increase of around R518.04 and R541.08, depending on which tariff they fall under. Houses that use as much as 1,500kWh/m can expect a R664 hike under the Homepower 1 umbrella, R648 for Homepower 2 and 3 customers, and R676 for those in the Homepower 4 bracket.

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How? By providing free access to Microsoft’s Mzansi Digital Learning platform — a free resource that’s being taken advantage of today. As for where Vodacom comes into this — it’ll be hosting Mzansi Digital Learning on the network’s new NXT LVL platform and integrated into ConnectU — a zero-rated platform that will allow Vodacom customers to access the free resource without any mobile data or Wi-Fi.

It’s essentially turning what was already free learning into, er, free-er, learning. And we’re here for it.

Modern problems require modern solutions

“We are extremely grateful to embark on this transformative partnership with our longstanding partner Microsoft South Africa. Collaborating with a like-minded brand who share our values and ambition is [a] testament to our collective commitment to address unemployment and empower individuals through innovative digital training,” says Mathys Venter, Managing Executive for Prepaid and Loyalty at Vodacom South Africa.

The courses found in Mzansi Digital Learning focus on “important topics to help users understand the changing landscape of business in a digital world of Generative AI, entrepreneurship, and cybersecurity.” Vodacom added that the courses have been designed to align with the most sought-after jobs in South Africa and that participating customers will receive certification by completing courses on the platform.

Read More: Vodacom’s got the collecting tin out again for its annual bout of price hikes

Vodacom and Microsoft aim to reach around 300,000 South Africans through the initiative, adding to the 95,000 people already studying there.

“We are fully committed to supporting and enabling our youth as we collectively work towards closing the skills gap and empowering every person to achieve more in this era of digital transformation. It is increasingly about ensuring young people are equipped with the skills they need for the jobs that exist today and, in the future,” says Asif Valley, National Technology Officer at Microsoft South Africa.

Any Vodacom customers interested in registering for the programme can do so here, though it’s worth a reminder that non-Vodacom customers can also sign up for Mzansi Digital Learning too — though they will have to suffer the burden of mobile data and Wi-Fi requirements. That’s probably what Vodacom is counting on (at least a little).

Meta is the epitome of surveillance capitalism, exploiting our personal data – and young girls – for money. Shame on anyone who still believes they are reaching their audiences when all your marketing money is doing is propping up a “vast paedophile network,” according to an investigation last year by The Wall Street Journal with researchers from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Every day, 100,000 children experience sexual harassment on Instagram and Facebook, according to Meta’s own documents, as revealed in a New Mexico attorney-general lawsuit last year.

“Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of paedophiles,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the head of a Senate judiciary committee, which grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month, as well as the CEOs of X/Twitter, Snap Discord and TikTok.

Nvidia, meanwhile, actually does something useful for society – and the stock markets are clearly excited about the potential of its processors needed to power artificial intelligence (AI). Nvidia has quietly grown its expertise and market share for making graphical processing units (GPUs), which have been used by the gaming industry for decades. Rendering the complex videos of games requires processors to perform multiple processes at the same time, which turns out to be the same requirement for AI applications.

Never has one industry — AI — owed so much to another — gaming. Parents of gaming-obsessed teenagers can take some solace that their kids’ infatuation with first-person-shooter (FPS) games has helped advance humanity – albeit tangentially.

The Nvidia numbers are extraordinary. The 16.4% increase pushed Nvidia’s valuation to $1.94-trillion, putting it in third place behind tech giants Microsoft and Apple. Its $272-billion increase is about that of the combined value of Goldman Sachs Group and Boeing; while much more than car makers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis put together ($176-billion), according to data from TradingView.

Read More: Nvidia’s secret “TrueHDR” tool uses AI for real-time HDR-gaming conversion

Nvidia’s market cap is – amazingly – bigger than the GDP of all but 11 nations in 2022, including Brazil’s $1.92-trillion and Australia’s $1.69-trillion, according to Investopedia.

“Despite concerns over its high valuation, Nvidia’s unparalleled AI-related intellectual property, rooted in decades of visionary investment, sets it apart in a league of its own,” says Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann. Indeed it does. Like OpenAI, whose ChatGPT took the world by storm in November 2022, Nvidia is central to the AI industry.

And the good news will keep on coming, says Nvidia’s co-founder and chief executive, Jensen Huang. “Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” he said in a press release.

“We are one year into generative AI,” Huang told the New York Times. “My guess is we are literally into the first year of a 10-year cycle of spreading this technology into every single industry.”

• This column first appeared in the Financial Mail

Now, however, Eskom has published an update to the Kusile repairs, noting that its temporary measure — allowing it to “operate units 1, 2, and 3 [at Kusile] without utilising the Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) plant,” until 31 March 2025 has so far been successful, and that repairs to the permanent flue gas duct stack that started all this hassle are still on track. Whew.

Finally, some good Kusile news

That’s big news, because, according to Eskom, “the recovery of these units represents a significant milestone in the Generation Operational Plan, contributing a much-needed 2,400MW to the national grid.”

To bypass the MES policy, Eskom was (and still is) forced to make a few arrangements, thanks to the Department’s National Air Quality Officer. For one, it is required to warn the residents surrounding Kusile of the potential health risks involved in living where they do. And two, the obvious, was for Eskom to lessen the impact of its CO2 emissions — something usually handled by the damaged flue gas duct stack.

Eskom’s Group Executive for Generation, Bheki Nxumalo, reckons the utility has so far adhered to all the requirements, noting that emissions from the three damaged units at Kusile remain below the atmospheric emission license and ambient air quality limits set out by the Department.

Read More: Eskom says goodbye to load shedding and hello to load limiting 

“We have implemented robust health screening initiatives within the surrounding areas and have installed additional ambient quality monitoring equipment to specifically monitor SO2 emissions. This ensures that we safely and responsibly operate Kusile while minimizing any potential impact on public health. We remain committed to Zero Harm, which is one of our core business values. We also remain dedicated to achieving a sustainable energy supply for the country,” Nxumalo said.

“The health and safety of our employees, contractors and neighbouring communities remains Eskom’s top priority. We will continue taking proactive measures to manage and mitigate any potential risks,” concluded Nxumalo.

Eskom signed off the update with a reminder that it was “on track” to complete the repairs to Kusile’s generating units by December 2024.

After it brushed off Canal+’s initial R105/share buyout offer at the beginning of February, MultiChoice said that it felt the group had severely undervalued it. We’ve got to admit, it’s got a point what with the sports stranglehold it currently has. Canal+ has since returned, according to Reuters, with an improved R125/share offer.

Surprisingly, Canal+ isn’t raising the white flag

The upped offer has to do with how the media group handled itself after MultiChoice rejected its offer. Canal+ went and upped its ordinary shares in MultiChoice, bringing its stakeholders’ share up to 35.01%. Once it had crossed the 35% threshold, South Africa’s Takeover Regulations Panel (TRP) ruled that it had to immediately make a firm buyout intention announcement — though the TRP later gave the group an extension to 8 April.

It’s come up with a revised offer a little early. While the minimum price for the mandatory offer is R105/ordinary share, Canal+ is bumping that up to R125/ordinary share — a 19% increase — to make it that much more enticing.

Read More: DStv’s largest price hike in years will hit wallets on 1 April 2024 – but it’s not all bad news

“MultiChoice and Canal+ intend to mutually cooperate in this regard. Accordingly, MultiChoice will give customary exclusivity undertakings to Canal+,” MultiChoice said (via TechCentral). “Once the mandatory offer is made, the independent board of MultiChoice will be constituted and will, after receipt of the independent expert’s opinion, provide its opinion and recommendation on the mandatory offer.”

Should the deal be approved by all parties and shareholders, it will have a job getting it past the country’s Electronic Communications Act, which caps voting control of broadcasting licensees by foreign entities at 20%.

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This makes a sort of sense. Since LG left the smartphone game, it’s continued to churn out components that would also suit virtual reality tech. But that doesn’t quite fit the stated aim of the partnership, which is to “…combine the strengths of both companies across products, content, services and platforms to drive innovation in customer experiences within the burgeoning virtual space.”

A new Meta

It doesn’t sound like Mark Zuckerberg, LG CEO William Cho, and LG Home Entertainment president Park Hyoung-sei (pictured above) got together merely to talk about how many OLED screens Meta can buy from the South Korean company’s factories. A possible new extended reality ecosystem is hinted at in LG’s announcement, possibly involving the company’s televisions.

This would include artificial intelligence (AI) built into LG devices based on Meta’s large language model LLaMA (hey, the company has to use it for something). This should result in “…significant synergies in next-gen XR device development”, which sounds to us like an LG-made entertainment device (a headset) that incorporates both LG’s software ecosystem and Meta’s AI and VR tech to compete with the Apple Vision Pro. At a significantly more affordable price point, hopefully.

Of course, that’s not official. The partnership announcement is thin on specifics, leaving us to read between the lines. It would be awfully surprising if we were far from the mark, however. LG, before leaving the smartphone space, was in a very experimental frame of mind and an all-new XR gadget would probably appeal to the company internally. And Zuckerberg is always keen to put his company’s data-suction skills to work in any hardware that’ll have it. We’ll keep our ears open about any more concrete developments in this space.

The mobile service provider and technology giant has applied for leave to appeal the Makate judgment in South Africa’s Constitutional Court, saying it believes “…the judgment and order are fundamentally flawed.”

Vodacom’s reasoning

Vodacom said, “It is apparent from the dissenting judgment of the SCA that the majority judgment overlooked or ignored many of the issues between the parties and their evidence and submissions relating to those issues.” The company outlined its objections to the SCA’s judgment starting with the claim that the judgment “…deprives Vodacom of its right to a fair trial under section 34 of the Constitution.”

Vodacom, in a statement, said that the court decided on matters not brought before the court by either representative party. The SCA also only considered evidence from Makate when rendering its judgment, “…ignoring swathes of evidence in this regard presented by Vodacom contesting Mr Makate’s version.” The most damning objection the company has to the 6 February SCA order is that they “…are unintelligible, incomprehensible, and vague rendering them incapable of implementation and enforcement.”

The company outlined other objections to the judgment that were less directed at the Supreme Court of Appeal, saying that carrying out the payment of billions of rands to Kenneth Nkosana Makate will negatively impact the company, South Africa’s economy, and the country as a whole. All of which boils down to ‘We’re going back to court, thanks’ but the company’s statement also says it remains open to negotiating a “fair and reasonable amount as compensation for Mr. Makate’s idea that led to the development of the PCM product.” With billions on the line, that may be little more than legal optimism, given that previous negotiations have fallen through.

Vodacom isn’t messing around this year

Vodacom’s justification for the hike is lodged firmly behind Stats SA’s announcement of 5.3% headline inflation for January 2024. Vodacom’s increases are less than 5.3%, coming in at 4.6% for customers on average. It also whipped out the same excuses it provided a year ago — blaming the hikes on base station vandalism, battery theft, Eskom’s inadequacy, and the ever-weakening Rand.

It’s not all bad news, though. Vodacom’s Consumer Business Director, Rishaad Tayob, mentioned that the operator was leaving certain products out of the equation, all thanks to the company’s commitment “to delivering innovations that enhance the value we deliver to customers to help alleviate cost of living pressures.”

“To help cushion customers from impacts of higher increases, the likes of insurance premiums, hardware and device costs, valued-added-services (VAS), out-of-bundle (OOB) rates remain unchanged,” he said.

Postpaid tariffs, recurring and once-off bundles weren’t lucky enough to escape the hikes and will increase by an average of 8% sometime in May, though Vodacom supplied no reasoning for the month-late increase. Oh, we’re not complaining. Yet. Fibre customers, on the other hand, should expect a 5% average increase “on selected fibre plans,” from April.

Read More: Where is Makate’s Please Call Me patent?

The only people winning here are “selected” RED Integrated and RED VIP customers, who will get up to 11% extra data, and those on Flexi plans, who will “continue to get additional airtime.”

“We remain committed to contributing to the growth and resilience of the country’s economy while offering customers the best value, a robust network, affordable pricing structure as well as an exceptional customer experience,” Tayob concluded.

To get a better idea of how much more you’ll need to start saving each month, Vodacom has released lists of all the affected plans for the year ahead:

• RED Flexi changes,
• RED Integrated and RED VIP changes,
• Mobile Broadband Plans & Home internet changes.

Ever since, we’ve heard countless falsehoods promising the demise of e-tolls, though nothing official has ever made it past the planning phase. Despite the continual threats to scrap the system, the government continued sending out the bills, eventually promising refunds to those law-abiding citizens who continued paying.

Goodbye forever, e-tolls. You won’t be missed

The decision —  one we’ve heard a good few times already — appeared at last night’s State of the Province Address, where Premier Panyaza Lesufi said we’d be seeing the tail-end of e-tolls come 31 March 2024. Yeah, right. We may have been a little more believing if we hadn’t heard it all before.

“E-tolls are a system that was introduced in our province by the national government on the basis that we wanted to improve our road network. We have now reached a stage where we all accept that the people of Gauteng have rejected e-tolls,” said Lesufi.

“When I addressed this house, I declared that e-tolls are history. We had a meeting with all affected parties. We held a meeting with the Minister of Finance, we also held a meeting with the Minister of Transport. All of us now have reached an agreement that by the 31st of March this year, the formal process to switch off and delink e-tolls will begin and e-tolls will be history in our province,” he continued.

Did you catch that? Lesufi specifically mentions that “by the 31st of March this year, the formal process to switch off and de-link e-tolls will begin…” rather than offering up any solid information about when they will officially be considered “history.” With how this government operates, there’s a likely chance that the process of switching off and de-linking the system could take months, even years.

Read More: Gauteng drivers are getting new, mandatory “tamper-proof” number plates in April 

This may be remedied by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, as Lesufi confirmed that more details of the system’s shutdown would be discussed at tomorrow evening’s 2024 budget speech. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a more diligent removal scheme than we’ve seen previously. We wouldn’t say no to an update on those refunds, either.

The luckiest of DStv’s customers, also known as EasyView subscribers, won’t be feeling the sting of a price hike this year, holding onto that R30/m price tag. Others haven’t been quite so lucky. Those under the DStv Family subscription will only see a 3.1% increase, while DStv Access customers will be forced to bear the massive 7.8% increase coming their way — far beyond the country’s average inflation of 6% for 2023.

DStv’s got us locked in (but in a good way)

MultiChoice, obviously, believes the annual price hikes are “fair” considering the wide array of content it has on offer, from football, rugby, and the UFC to the same four episodes of Friends on loop throughout the day. We get it. We’d say the same thing in DStv’s shoes. But after hearing what MultiChoice had to say on the subject, we reckon it may actually be onto something. Sort of.

This year, the broadcaster is introducing what it calls a “price lock”, whereby monthly fees will remain ‘locked’ in at their current rates, provided the customer signs up for a 24-month contract upfront.

“We’re excited about DStv price guarantee which secures a price lower than today for our customers who sign up for our 24-month deal to beat the increase,” says Marc Jury (via News24).

That means those customers who take the bait sign up for a 24-month contract before 1 April 2024 will avoid 2025’s annual increase, and continue to pay the R880/m fee until their contract ends in 2026, after which they will be forced to feel 2026’s annual increases. Customers taking advantage of the price lock — before or after 1 April 2024 — will have their R120/m access fee comped, knocking off a big chunk of the total price.

Read More: Au revoir, Canal+ – MultiChoice rejects massive buyout offer

It’s an interesting tactic, giving the more loyal customers a break on their monthly fees, but it also gives us an idea of where DStv’s head is at. Can you remember the last time DStv was this kind when it came to annual price hikes? Us neither. We wouldn’t be surprised to see more cost-cutting schemes come into play next year.

Enough about that, though. Let’s get down to why you’re here. This is what each package will cost come 1 April 2024:

• Premium – R929/m (from R879/m – 5.7% increase)
• Compact Plus – R619/m (from R579/m – 6.9% increase)
• Compact – R469/m (from R449/m – 4.5% increase)
• Family – R329/m (from R319/m – 3.1% increase)
• Access – R139/m (from R129/m) – 7.8% increase)
• EasyView – R29/m (no change)

According to News24, DStv’s Access’ larger-than-usual price hike is due to the addition of new sports content to the package, which will see ESPN, La Liga, SuperSport Variety 4 and SuperSport’s Blitz channels thrown into the mix.

Customers under the DStv Stream umbrella have nothing to worry about, for now. According to Marc Jury, the internet-only service is still fairly new — having only launched in mid-2023 — and a price hike “is not warranted.” Yet. We expect DStv’s tune to change by the time we’re writing this in February 2025.

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