Turns out the fix for the far corner of a property isn't a faster network; it's a much slower one. We get into the radio that quietly covers ground your cameras and cell signal can't reach, what it does brilliantly, and the one thing you should never promise a client it'll do.

Plus: a sticker that spots a fire before there's smoke, the boardroom TV renting out the network, and why your next recorder costs more.

Let's get into it.

Past the last fence line, there's no power and no signal. The fix isn't a faster network, it's a slower one…

Every quote you write assumes two things are present: Mains power and a network connection. On a suburban wall, fair enough, but the moment a client asks you to cover the borehole, the back reservoir, the far pump house or the top camp two kilometres from the homestead, both assumptions fall away.

There’s no Eskom out there, no fibre, patchy cell signal at best. That's exactly where the expensive breaches happen, and exactly where you need the best tech to reach.

The answer has been sitting in the industry for years, and it works by giving up the thing everyone else chases: speed.

LoRa is a long-range, low-power radio built for sending tiny messages very far. One gateway covers 5 to 15km in rural areas and 2 to 5km in town, so a single box at the homestead can hear devices spread across the whole property. It runs in unlicensed spectrum, which means no SIM and no airtime bill per device, and the sensors themselves sip so little power they run for years on a battery, which is the only reason solar field units are practical at all.

Two things about it matter specifically to us. It talks both ways, so you can send a command out to a device, not just listen. And because it uses spread-spectrum modulation, it's more resistant to interference than the wireless most people know.

You may be selling it without knowing. Olarm HALO, the wireless in the Olarm ONE system, is built on LoRa, which is why it holds up better under interference than traditional alarm wireless and why it reaches across a property rather than across a room.

Fidelity SecureFire and Sigfox SA have launched HEATWATCH, a heat-monitoring sticker you apply straight onto high-risk kit: solar inverters, battery banks, generators, DBs, server rooms. It measures temperature at the equipment itself rather than waiting for smoke, runs two years on its battery, needs no WiFi or hardwiring, and reports over the national Sigfox 0G network into a 24/7 command centre with fire response attached.

Signal: SA's solar and battery boom quietly added a fire risk to every property you cover. A no-wiring sensor on the inverter is an easy add-on conversation, and a differentiator on the quote.

Researchers found Samsung smart TV apps, including a Pac-Man game Samsung itself featured under "Editor's Choice", carrying code that turns the TV into a tunnel for strangers' web traffic. Samsung is now banning the practice and pulling the apps; LG did the same last month after finding it in roughly 42% of its store.

Signal: Anything on a client's network with an app store is a device you don't fully control. Worth knowing what's sharing the line your alarm signals ride on.

Deepfakes and generative AI have made fake identities cheap and convincing: cases where the selfie doesn't match the ID document are up 73% year-on-year, and synthetic identity fraud jumped 142% in a year. The practical defence is certification: iBeta testing to ISO/IEC 30107-3 puts a reader through days of masks, fake fingerprints and deepfakes to see if it can be spoofed.

Signal: "Is it iBeta certified?" is the one question that separates a serious biometric reader from a pretty one. Ask it before you spec it, not after.

The FSCA's latest enforcement report shows penalties of R2.8 billion imposed on 76 people and entities, up from R119.8 million the year before, with 140 public warnings issued. Roughly a fifth of those warnings involved criminals impersonating legitimate, licensed businesses to look credible.

Signal: 68% of South Africans say they've been targeted by fraud. If your brand carries trust in your area, assume someone will eventually borrow it, and tell clients how you actually contact them.

AI data centres have swallowed the world's memory supply, and it's now reaching ordinary hardware: MacBook Air delivery dates have slipped to late August or September, with DRAM prices up as much as 98% in Q1 2026 and another 58 to 63% expected after that. The industry is calling it RAMageddon. IDC expects the PC market to shrink 11.3% this year.

Signal: Recorders, control-room PCs and anything with a chip in it rides the same curve. Buy ahead of need while older stock is still on the shelf, and quote hardware with a shorter validity period than you used to.

Half the awkward jobs come down to the same thing: the client wants a device somewhere a cable can't reasonably reach. The Olarm ONE system is built for exactly that spread. The Olarm HUB sits at the centre and takes a wired Ethernet connection when one is available, while Olarm HALO covers the points where pulling cable would mean trenching, chasing walls or an argument with the client.

Three reasons it's worth your team's hour:

Get the whole system straight in your head before the next site visit.

Wits researchers have shown quantum information carried on "twisted" light survives turbulent air completely intact, even when the light itself arrives mangled: the topological number held exact while the quantum state's purity dropped to 33%.

Published in Physical Review Letters, and the neat part is it needs no new hardware, just a different way of measuring. This breakthrough reopens a route to open-air unbreakable comms that's been stuck in the lab for two decades.

Signal: The eventual buyers of this are banks and critical-infrastructure operators watching today's encryption run out of road. Worth knowing SA's lab is at the front of that queue.

Plenty on the water this month if you're anywhere near the KZN coast:

Fishing or running something we should shout about? Hit reply and put it on our radar.