Tata increases Neotel shareholding

Good stuff! They've done great work in the subcontinent with regards to Telecoms.
 
When you want to roll out a new product, like Seacom, the DoC jumps up and down screaming about needing a majority African/South African ownership before you can do any kind of business. Yet they seem to have no problem selling critical infrastructure off afterwards to huge multinational corporations.

I just don't get it.
 
the less control any south african company has in neotel the better i guess.
 
BrokenLink said:
the less control any south african company has in neotel the better i guess.
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It's just that in most countries, you want locals to control the large established businesses. That way the consistent profits of those companies are staying within your country, and will hopefully be used for further development therein.

When people want to develop new things, or invest fresh money, then you don't mind if it's from international investors because they're shouldering the risk and pumping fresh money into your country. Risk which the locals may not be able to afford or may not want to take.

Now South Africa seems to have it backwards: here we have a company which has laid all the fibre, got all it's products lined up, and now we decide to sell up before they've begun making a profit. We sit there and invest for all the hard capital intensive slog, and then pull out just before the money flows?

Now compare that to something risky like laying fibre across the ocean. That's something you should get international companies to do, because it's expensive and maybe there'll be a bandwidth glut or something (as the articles here sometimes say). No, instead we can just spend years and years demanding that it's locally owned.
 
Hopefully it will be for the best. At least it will make decision making easier in the company and so hopefully speed up things a bit...
 
sunsoffun said:
lol.... they have?
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Tata Teleservices has almost 30 million subscribers using ADSL and Wireless broadband. This requires 12,500 towers nationwide. Currently the company is ahead of Vodafone in terms of market share.

Now there is much more competition in India, so overall penetration per capita is only at 4%, but if they can successfully handle a subscriber base of that size I think their experience will work well in South Africa.
 
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