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1 August 2011

Social Communication tops SATNAC 2011 Agenda

Africa's eminent ICT conference, the annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC), will focus on the social communications phenomenon currently taking the world by storm.

Hosted by Telkom, the three day conference will see captains of industry deliver a number of keynote presentations around the conference theme: Social Communications: challenging the limits of technology and innovation.

The topical theme was chosen in line with recent predictions by international ICT researcher, Gartner, that by 2016 social technologies will be integrated with most business applications. Gartner advises that companies should bring together their social Customer Relationship Management, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a co-ordinated strategy.

"Social communication is fast going beyond the consumer and lifestyle realms to becoming a corporate necessity. The challenge, from a technology perspective, is to enable ongoing social communication which will require much innovation and collaboration," explained Conference Chairman Marius Mostert.

To kick off this exciting conference, Anton Musgrave of FutureWorld SA will deliver the opening keynote address entitled: "Naked Leadership". He will discuss the world of openness, transparency, open innovation and new accountability focusing heavily on the technology themes driving these core issues.

Other high level speakers include Nombulelo Moholi, Group CEO of Telkom; Nokia Siemens Networks Global CTO, Hossein Moiin and Director General of the Department of Communications, Rosey Sekese.

The conference provides a platform for industry, academia and operators within the Information Communications and Technology (ICT) sector to share views on key challenges facing the industry, and to discuss the progress achieved in applied research.

The programme also provides industry with an opportunity to engage with students working on various projects at the Telkom Centres of Excellence. Several post-graduate students from the 16 Telkom Centres of Excellence will present their research projects at the conference.

"It is often said that there is too little interaction between academic institutions and industry. SATNAC provides that opportunity for industry to influence tertiary institutions to become more outcome-focused and prepare engineers for their roles when they enter the workplace," said Mostert.

SATNAC 2011 will be held in East London from 4 to 7 September at the East London International Convention Centre. All registrations have to be completed online (www.satnac.org.za). Information on hotel accommodation can also be found on the website.

The conference starts with a Welcome Function on Sunday evening. The traditional icebreaker golf day will begin at 09:30 on Sunday at the East London Golf Club.

Summit TV, the official broadcast partner for the conference, will broadcast the plenary sessions live and will also broadcast a highlights package in the week after the conference. Summit TV is available on DSTV Channel 412.

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.