Ask Afrihost CEO Gian Visser anything

[Afrihost-Gian]

It is said that innovators do not fear failure, they actually aim to fail often as this allows them to improve and beat their competitors. What are some of Afrihost's biggest failures that allowed you to come back stronger?

I certainly don't aim to fail often ;-) If you could guarantee that everything we did succeeded beyond our wildest expectations I have a hunch I would gladly accept that! Having said that, we do not fear failure, and when it does happen we try embrace it and learn how to make things better the next time. I definitely agree that it helps us to improve.

Our biggest failure I can think of in our recent past: Our ADSL issues we had last year. We let our clients down. It hurt us really badly. It damaged the trust many of our clients had in us. It damaged our brand. We went from winning the ISP of the Year for 4 years in a row to coming about 5th or 6th overall for 2015 (I've blocked out the actual result!). And it forced us to make some dramatic changes that have led directly to our new ADSL network and enabled us to give better DSL service than we ever have been able to in the past.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Following the uproar last year with the 'problems' Afrihost was experiencing, what was the real-world effect on your subscriber base in terms of numbers? Did you feel it? And how has the uptake been since introducing your new network infrastructure (Afrigreen/blue), have the customers returned and is the growth on the new network in line with your expectations? Be honest.

We most definitely felt it. No question. We had been experiencing double digit annual growth in our DSL client numbers in the preceding years. And this growth stopped. Last year, we had a month, July I believe, where we lost more ADSL clients than we gained. That had never happened before. That whole time was excruciating. And mostly because we had let our clients down.

However, with the launch of our new network we have seen this all slowly turn around. We have been able to add innovative features to our DSL products. We have been able to do things we couldn't do before. Clients have returned (not all yet of course!). The great news is our new network has grown over 30% in capacity since we launched it in October last year. And we have been able to upgrade it seamlessly and quickly and not have any of the problems we used to experience with quick growth.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Why don't you consider buying company as eg.Amobia Communications and roll out WiFi service for the thousands clients who refuse to be "serviced" by incompetent Telkom?
Regards,Trenk,Kensington

Wifi is something that we would consider in the future. However, at the moment we already have work bursting from our eyeballs - We're spending our energy focusing on our new network, our Mobile offering and our Fibre plans.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Does Afrihost have any plans in future to build it's own fibre network or focus exclusively on offering packages on existing networks?

For now we are focusing exclusively on working with the top fibre providers that already have infrastructure in place.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Where do you see Afrihost in 5 years time? How do you predict Afrihost's future will impact the lives of South Africans, when considering things on the global scale?

Tough question! 5 years is a long time. As long as we are still passionately obsessed with delivering incredible service and joy-filled products I believe our future will have a positive impact on the lives of South Africans - no matter where we find ourselves.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

I recently read a blog post on what it means to be CEO of a company and the responsibilities that come with such a role. What are the top 3 aspects of being a CEO do you enjoy and top 3 aspects you wish you didn't have to deal with ?

Dang. This question is too difficult to answer after a long day ;-) Favourite 3 aspects? Our team, our clients and our products. Toughest 3 aspects? Our team, our clients and our products!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Afrihost has received some bad press in the past due to network issues. What is your strategy to overcome this negative association and beat out the competition in the long run?

Passionate, Obsessed, Over-the-top Service! It’s what we built our name on, and it’s one of the key things that makes Afrihost Afrihost (does that make sense, it sounds right in my head but looks weird on the page?). We will relentlessly focus and aim to improve our product and service wherever we can. We don’t just want to be able to answer calls faster and resolve problems better, we want to give you a unique service experience – simplify your life and solve the problem before you even knew it occurred, give back constantly to show our appreciation. One of our core values is a passionate commitment to our clients through service, so that’s really our solution to everything ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Many successful people argue that the best approach in business is to focus on a single product or service and be exceptional at that. Bearing in mind that Afrihost has a very wide range of service offerings, would you agree with the above rationale or do you have a different perspective?

I do believe that you do need to focus on one key thing and be exceptional at it. And that will increase the chances of your company's success. However, I don't believe that that focus needs to be on one single product or service. I believe that the thing that you focus on can be something that stretches across many products and services and ties them all together in some way.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What are the timelines for your FTTH products on other networks, and what other networks are you negotiating with?

We’re talking to as many fibre companies as we can who have an open access model. We’re pretty much in talks with every fibre co you’ve heard of (and maybe some you haven’t) to get the widest access possible for our clients. Our plan is to launch fibre offerings with many of these companies throughout the course of this year.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Will Afrihost start opening offices in Cape Town since you have grown as an company to offer opportunities to new comers to the IT Industry ?

We don't have any plans to open offices in Cape Town. Although I am first on the list to head that office up if we ever do!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Good day sir,

What are your thoughts on free wi-fi projects like project Isizwe? It's not really a secret that our mobile ISP's are ripping off the whole country and the less fortunate are being hit the hardest.

It's a "you need money to make money" scenario. Free wifi opens new possibilities and will most definitely become a thorn in the side of any mobile operator providing data services.

Also, keep up the innovating stuff like Afriman posting replies. It's what gives you the competitive edge and sets a benchmark for the other ISP's.

I think that it is a fantastic idea and initiative! I'm 100% behind anything that increases broadband penetration in SA, even if we are not behind it or are not involved in any way. I sincerely believe that the more people that have access to the internet the better it will be for every single business in SA in the coming years.

And thanks for the kudos re Afriman. He and his team are all legends. And I have the Legend Certificates to prove it.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How do you motivate the people directly in contact with you?

No quick and easy answer to this one. I do believe that one of the key responsibilities of anyone in any leadership capacity in any business is to inspire those people that they work with. The easiest way to motivate someone is to show them that they have purpose in what they do. As long as someone has a passionate purpose they are very easy to motivate!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hi Gian, how long is your contract with EchoSP as your new network provider?

Hey PB. Let me first say that I think you have done really great things with Cool Ideas. Well done!

Our contract with EchoSP is very unique as far as service provider contracts go so I can't give you an exact answer to that. Suffice it to say that we work very closely with them and I believe that we will for many years to come.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Will you change your support to hours to meet the demand for your clients ?

Everything we do is driven by our clients! If the demand exists for us to extend our hours (or if we can focus more effectively on offering support in other ways) we’ll always do what our clients need us to do.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Have you ever been kept awake at night thinking to yourself: "Will the Afrihost DSL discussion thread ever be quiet?"?

Hahaha! Love this question. For months and months I was kept awake by this question. The good news is that that specific question isn't keeping me awake at night any more. Now it is a myriad of other questions ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Not a personal attack against you or the company , please see it more like a constructive criticism. Do you have a any idea of how out of sync your departments are? (in the hosting part of your business) For example - when asking one department about whether there are any firewall rules blocking traffic to my hosted server. One answer guarantees (and confirm in e-mail) me there are no firewalls whilst another says there definitely are! It look at days to resolve a firewall related issue wasting our resources.

I'm sorry that you went through this. Hosting is a very complicated product to offer. There are many whizzing parts flying about. We do our best to give the best service we can, but there are times we don't get it all right. And clearly this was one of those times. Thanks for your feedback and I'll have a look into this to try and see how we can improve. Thanks again.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

It seems Afrihost is trying to diversify its product offerings (even moving into the cellular network arena to some extent). What other diversifying options will we see from you in the future?

We are trying to see where we can add value to our clients. We will try offer them services that (and this is key!) really and truly improve their lives in some way - by saving them a few bucks, by simplifying something, by saving them some time or giving them peace of mind.

For years it was just hosting. And then we offered ADSL. And then we got into the mobile data side of things. And now we've just launched mobile voice. And soon we will launch our fibre offerings. But we try not to launch something just for the sake of launching it. We will only launch it if we ourselves can use it and we can confidently get our friends and family to use it with pride.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

As post #81 can i get a free shirt or something ?

Lucky Post #81! You sir (or madam) have just earned yourself a t-shirt! Please PM Afriman, let him know about this post, tell him your size and details and we will get a t-shirt to you!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Will there ever be uncapped 3g\lte or larger data caps as lots of us want to stream games but don't have the adsl infrastructure in our areas to do so

I'm going to copy an answer I wrote earlier today. Because it's late. And I'm lazy.

"I would personally love to offer this or something similar. However, right now, we can't do this. We pay per GB of mobile data moved - no matter the time of day or night. And given what our (Afrihost's) input costs per GB of mobile data is, we can simply not do this. Even at a much lower throttled rate."

Will there ever be uncapped mobile? I believe that one day in the future there will be. But I don't think it will be in the short or medium term.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Will the marketing budget ever be used for marketing?

We occasionally use our marketing budget for marketing. Occasionally. ;-)