Andrew Springate the new ARC Telecoms chairman

Andrew Springate has a long track record of building telecommunications businesses and brings decades of experience to ARC Telecoms.

As the chairman of ARC’s board, Andrew will be providing his expertise in both the telecoms sector and general good governance practices.

“To be a modern telecommunications provider, you have to have excellent technical and commercial skills internally, but also have strategic partnerships with other service providers. Our customers require a comprehensive portfolio of telecoms services – voice, data and advanced applications,” says Springate.

“No single service provider can do it all – it needs well managed partnerships so that customers can get all the benefits of a strong ecosystem, without the hassles of having to manage multiple vendors themselves.”

Steve Briggs, CEO of ARC Telecoms, commented, “Andrew’s involvement in ARC will make an enormous difference in our growth plans – we now have a very experienced executive to help ensure that the relationships we forge with other providers will benefit ARC’s customers over the long term.”

Andrew Springate

Andrew was born in Johannesburg but raised in Durban. His professional career started at Shave & Gibson Carton and Print, where he rose to run the regional office in Johannesburg, then assisted in the acquisition of Africard.

Andrew took over the running of the company, helping build it from a non-financial card manufacturing business to a fully certified VISA and Mastercard card manufacturing plant.

Andrew then moved to Australia as Managing Director at Infopage, a telecoms company based in Perth, were he was responsible for the eventual sale of the business to Link Telecommunications.

He returned to SA in 1995 as CEO of the Cellular Division of Radiospoor Group. The company later listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Andrew was made Chief Operating Officer of the Group, responsible for all seven divisions.

Radiospoor was sold and delisted, and the shareholders bought a mobile payments business, PAYM8. Andrew acquired equity in the business and was appointed CEO, a position he still holds.