BROADCASTS.com

b'Last week, the global digital behemoth that is Facebook announced that they\\u2019ll be rolling out the OpenCellular system worldwide. OpenCellular is said to be an inexpensive, weather-resistant and fully customisable platform that will be able to serve as a wireless access point for connecting devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi.\\n\\nWhile this move by Facebook is no doubt just a footnote in the company\\u2019s playbook for achieving complete digital dominance, one wonders if this could signal the beginning of the end for the likes of Kenya\\u2019s BRCK\\u2014 a home-grown system designed to do exactly what OpenCellular promises to do, perhaps less reliably.\\n\\nOne wonders if there is any chance that a minnow like BRCK can stand up to the fire and might of a beast like Facebook? It seems unlikely that BRCK has captured enough of the affordable WiFi deployment market to develop a legitimate first-mover advantage, and it\\u2019s equally unlikely that anyone over at Facebook is losing any sleep worrying about their plans being disrupted by smaller players.\\n\\nAlso in this week\\u2019s show, we share a snippet from a conversation Andile Masuku had with Gareth Cliff\\u2014 the controversial South African Radio DJ, Idols South Africa judge, and Co-founder & President of Africa\\u2019s largest podcast producer, CliffCentral.com. Listen in to hear Gareth\\u2019s candid take on why he quit one of South Africa\\u2019s most lucrative radio gigs to found a platform that now boasts over 40 podcast titles and garners over 140,000 downloads per week.\\n\\nMusic Credits:\\nMusic by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)\\nMusic licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0'