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24 April 2011

BlackBerry Solution Now Available from 8•ta for Customers in South Africa

8•ta offers Free Mobile YouTube streaming on BlackBerry smartphones

Free BlackBerry Internet Service for first three months on contract

Johannesburg, South Africa – 8•ta and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the availability of the BlackBerry® solution for 8•ta customers with free mobile YouTube streaming of up to 500MB per month. The offer will be available in 8•ta and TelkomDirect outlets from 24 April 2011.

The BlackBerry solution brings together smartphones, software and services to allow easy wireless access to email, messaging, social networking, phone, calendar, web, multimedia and other business and lifestyle applications. 8•ta customers will now be able to enjoy the freedom and productivity benefits of using their BlackBerry smartphone to stay connected to people and information while on the go.

At launch, 8•ta will offer a free BlackBerry Internet Service subscription for the first three months for customers on Contract 1 with the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smartphone. At the end of the three months, 8•ta customers subscribed to the hero deal will enjoy a further discounted BlackBerry Internet Service plan of R49 (incl. VAT) per month for the remaining 21 month duration of their contract. *

Amith Maharaj, Managing Executive of 8•ta says: "It is our aim to shake up the market by offering simplicity and value to our customers. The BlackBerry solution offers the best of both worlds. We believe that the BlackBerry solution will help to ensure that our customers go beyond just using email and Internet on their smartphones. We also aim to enhance the offering with free mobile YouTube streaming, which is a first in South Africa."

"We are pleased to work with 8•ta to offer the BlackBerry solution to customers in South Africa," says Deon Liebenberg, Managing Director for Africa at RIM. "BlackBerry smartphones deliver a powerful and unique mobile experience, allowing users to stay easily connected to people and information while on the move."

At launch 8•ta will offer the BlackBerry® Curve™ 3G and BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smartphones. Soon thereafter, the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9780 and BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphones will also be offered.

8•ta will offer BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for corporate customers and BlackBerry® Internet Service for smaller businesses and individual users.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server is for organizations that manage their own email servers. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server software tightly integrates with IBM® Lotus® Domino®, Microsoft® Exchange and Novell® GroupWise® and uses advanced security and IT policy controls to enable secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate data.

BlackBerry Internet Service is designed for smaller businesses and individuals. It allows customers to access BlackBerry data services including Internet and access to up to 10 supported corporate and personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo! Mail and Google Mail) from a BlackBerry smartphone.

For further enquiries, please contact:

Pynee Chetty

Senior Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel:+27 12 642 1716

Mobile: +27 81 389 7874

Email: chettpr2@telkom.co.za

 OR

Leigh-Ann Francis

Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel: +27 12 642 1728

Mobile: +27 81 391 4780

Email: francilm@telkom.co.za

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ABOUT TELKOM:

Telkom is a leading communications services provider in South Africa. We had consolidated operating revenue of R16.8 billion and normalised profit after tax of R1, 683 million for the period ended 30 September 2015. Total assets amounted to R41.9 billion and equity attributable to the owners of Telkom to R23.5 billion as of 30 September 2015. The group generated normalised free cash flow of R1.4 billion for the period ended 30 September 2015.

As of 30 September 2015, we had approximately 3.3 million telephone access lines in service and 1,030,441 ports connected via MSAN access. We offer business, residential and payphone customers a wide range of services and products, including:

  • fixed-line retail voice services using PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, including ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines, and the sale of subscription based value-added voice services and calling plans;
  • fixed-line customer premises equipment rental and sales services both voice and data needs and these include PABX, Computers, Routers, Modems, Telephone handsets and other ancillary equipment;
  • interconnection services, including terminating and transiting traffic from South African mobile operators, as well as from international operators and transiting traffic from mobile to international destinations;
  • fixed-line data services, including domestic and international data transmission services, such as point-to-point leased lines, ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) services, packet-based services, managed data networking services and internet access and related information technology services;
  • Data Centre Operations includes e-commerce, application service provider, hosting, data storage, e-mail and security services;
  • W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), a 3G next generation network, including fixed voice services, data services and nomadic voice services;
  • mobile communication services, including voice services, data services and handset sales through our mobile navbar-brand called Telkom Mobile;
  •  information and communication services including cloud services, infrastructure services, workspace services, global service integration management and hardware and network equipment sales locally, in seven African countries, the UK and Dubai through Business Connexion Group; and
  • other services including directory services, through Trudon (Pty) Ltd, wireless data services, through Swiftnet (Pty) Ltd.

Convergence is one of our key strategic initiatives in building a sustainable future for Telkom.  We will lead the provision of converged services in South Africa in support of our mission statement: Seamlessly connecting people to a better life.