MyBroadband’s Wikus Steyn wins Vodacom Journalist of the Year award

MyBroadband’s Wikus Steyn has won the coveted Gauteng Vodacom Journalist of the Year award in the innovation category.

The annual Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards pays tribute to exceptional journalism in South Africa.

These awards, now in their twenty-second year, are highly regarded in the media industry and serve as a showcase of the best in local journalism.

Steyn entered the ‘Innovation in Journalism’ category for his comprehensive mobile network quality testing project and reporting.

As part of the project, he travelled over 10,000 kilometres, made 93,912 calls, and recorded over 41,000 call minutes.

The data was then processed to provide accurate results on ICASA’s standards, including:

• Average Call Setup Success Ratio (CSSR)
• Average Dropped Call Ratio (DCR)
• Average Call Setup Time (CST)
• Average Speech Quality Mean Opinion Score (MOS)

The results showed how each mobile operator performed in a region to assist them in improving in areas where they failed ICASA’s standards.

He published the results in a series of articles and shared the information with other media houses, which also reported the findings.

The judges appreciated the scope and uniqueness associated with Steyn’s work and awarded him the Gauteng Vodacom Journalist of the Year award in the coveted innovation category.

This award followed MyBroadband editor Jan Vermeulen winning the investigative journalism category in 2020 for his probe into IP address theft.

In June, MyBroadband journalist Myles Illidge was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards for his reporting on the Department of Justice’s ransomware attack.

Vermeulen thanked Vodacom for their recognition and support of quality journalism and for playing their role in advancing the sector.

He also thanked the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards judges for taking the time to judge this very technical investigation.

“Steyn is a brilliant researcher and journalist and does a fantastic job of investigating and reporting on technical issues,” Vermeulen said.

“This award is well deserved for one of the most expansive network testing projects globally by a media house. Steyn has done our profession proud,” he said.