> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Roundup — Friday, 21 August 2026 - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-21-august-2026/ - Published: 2026-08-21T04:00:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-21T04:00:35.000Z - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: The Roundup Today's edition Out Of Thin Air Good morning. One man's trash really can be another man's treasure. On the ground, DRDGold has just had the best year in its history reprocessing the mine dumps other miners walked away from. In the sky, Comsol's new 5G network has taken six months to scatter over a million Gauteng homes. Today's business plan is other people's leftovers. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--31-.png) --- WHOLESALE CHANGE ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-comsol-1.png) ## Comsol has covered a million Gauteng homes with a 5G network it will never sell you Comsol has sold wireless connectivity to South African businesses for nearly thirty years. Six months ago it started building a 5G network for homes, and it now covers more than a million Gauteng households, funded by a multibillion-rand raise announced on Thursday. In saying that, Comsol will not sell you a connection on it. The internet providers do that, and Afrihost has already listed uncapped 25Mbps at R275 a month, 75Mbps at R549, and an unrestricted package at R875 with a router included. **Who owns which half:** - Comsol owns the spectrum, the towers, the network and the core. The internet providers own the branding, the pricing, the billing, the support and the customer. - The money came from Platform Investment Partners, founding backers of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, and Wimsey Capital, the Otto family's investment company. Nedbank Private Equity sold out after nine years. - The spectrum is a 60MHz slice Icasa licensed in 2022, sitting just above Rain's allocation, and it carries no roll-out obligations and no renewal date. Two thousand base stations are planned nationally, with full Gauteng coverage targeted for March 2027\. The first internet provider goes live in September, and Stevenson will not name it. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/afrihost-is-already-selling-home-internet-on-a-5g-network-built-six-months-ago/) --- READ RECEIPTS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-meta--1.png) ## Meta starts charging South African businesses for WhatsApp replies on 1 October WhatsApp became the default South African help desk because answering a customer cost nothing. That ends on 1 October. The free-form messages an agent or a chatbot sends back inside the 24-hour window a customer's message opens become billable, one charge each, after being free since November 2024\. The standard advice when WhatsApp gets expensive is to push traffic into templates, and that stops working on the same day, because utility templates sent in reply inside the window start being billed too. Six weeks out, nobody has been told the rate. The service column on Meta's own rate card reads n/a, and the company has committed only to publishing October prices by 1 September. The 12c a message doing the rounds locally is an estimate reverse-engineered from what utility and authentication templates cost today. Helm, the Johannesburg firm that runs WhatsApp channels for DStv, Absa, Telkom, Capitec and MTN, puts the working range at 10c to 15c. Absa has run full banking inside the app since 2024, and an account dispute is nothing but replies. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/splitting-one-whatsapp-answer-into-three-messages-is-about-to-cost-three-times-as-much/) --- BAGEL BITE **How many hearts does an octopus have?** **A.** Zero **B.** Two **C.** Three --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-DRDGold-1.png) **DRDGold makes its money reprocessing mine dumps other companies walked away from, and this year it made more of it than ever.** Headline earnings rose 89% to R4.3 billion on a 40% jump in the rand gold price, and the board declared a final dividend of 120 cents, the largest in its history. At the results presentation, chief executive Niël Pretorius made his pitch to the rest of the industry: “Let us through the front door. Maybe we could do something with your tails.” [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/drdgold-wants-a-look-at-other-miners-waste-dumps-after-its-best-year-on-record/) **The JSE has halved its own rulebook over four years to keep companies from delisting, and on Wednesday it proposed trimming a little more.** Listed companies would no longer publish the diluted version of headline earnings, the profit-per-share number investors compare them on, with comments open until 13 October. The same day, Grain SA said the exchange had decided to fight its court bid over soybean pricing, a difference the farmers' body puts at R696 million. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/an-accounting-rewrite-is-about-to-take-a-profit-line-out-of-jse-company-results/) **South Africa had a good inflation number and a good currency day on Wednesday, and only one of them was ours.** Stats SA put July inflation at 4.3%, down from 5%, with food and drink at 0.9%, the lowest since June 2010\. Stewing beef, steak and mince all cost less than a year ago. The rand then strengthened through R16.08, its best in five months, after the US Treasury said it would at least double its buybacks of long-dated bonds. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/beef-bread-and-maize-meal-pulled-south-african-food-inflation-to-a-16-year-low/) **Jeff Bezos promised 30-minute drone delivery on 60 Minutes in December 2013 and said it would take four or five years.** Amazon said on Wednesday that Prime Air will reach nearly 500 American cities and towns by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase on its current 11 sites. The 500 counts municipalities inside the range of planned hubs, not 500 new drone bases, since each hub covers about 175 square miles. Crashes in Arizona and Texas are still under investigation. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/amazons-nearly-500-drone-delivery-towns-are-not-nearly-500-drone-bases/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--27-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--30-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-Ugu2vk5uo3Z6z895Z&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Three** Two of an octopus’s hearts pump blood through the gills to pick up oxygen, while the larger systemic heart pumps oxygenated blood around the rest of the body. During jet propelled swimming, the systemic heart stops beating, making this type of movement particularly tiring and helping explain why octopuses often prefer to crawl. Their blood is also blue because it uses copper containing hemocyanin to carry oxygen instead of the iron containing hemoglobin found in human blood. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.