Internet

South Africa is on the eve of a major broadband infrastructure roll-out. Affordable broadband can have a significant impact on the country's socio-economic, political, cultural and educational development; but broadband penetration in South Africa lags behind countries with a similar level of development such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Turkey.

Business people, community activists and policy-makers have an interest in as many people as possible -including people in the lowest income-brackets- having access to the internet, being able to check out important information on websites and communicate cheaply via email or internet phone.

In order to reduce poverty and foster inclusive development through affordable access to the internet, APC is working on a resource kit for realising a universal access agenda, present promising options, experiences, lessons and opportunities in pro-poor access provision in developing societies.

The telecoms regulator has begun issuing new licences that will permit operators to build their own networks, just a week after a court victory clarified the law and opened the sector up to hugely increased competition.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) will hand out two types of licences to replace those that became defunct when the Electronic Communications Act was promulgated.

The most valuable version should ultimately be issued to about 300 internet service providers and other voice and data carriers, thanks to a court case instigated by Altech.

Mozilla is currently deep in the heart of its celebration over officially setting a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads (8,002,530!) in 24 hours for its Firefox 3 browser. But the company isn't cheering alone - its enjoying this victory with the community it rightfully credits for helping it to succeed.

Mozilla's marketing strategy has historically been word-of-mouth engagement, a method that very creatively began with its 2004 Firefox 1.0 launch. As more social networking venues have opened up and expanded to businesses, Mozilla has adapted to putting up appropriate channels and resources.

"Since Firefox is all about the online experience it's a natural fit for folks who are open to social networking," said Paul Kim, vice president of marketing for Mozilla. "We announced Download Day with a very concerted plan to leverage multiple social networks and to seed content on those networks that would drive traffic to the download site."