SNO gets into gear
The company, which has yet to launch its new name and branding, confirmed last week that it had appointed Ajay Pandey, the former boss of Tata Teleservices in India, as its new managing director.
Other directors on the board include Narasimhan Srinath (VSNL), Frans Ndoroma (Telecom Namibia, a shareholder in Communitel), M Adam (Eskom), I Amuah (Two Consortium), Eugene Ruiters (Nexus) and Karl Socikwa (Transtel).
A SNO representative said that as stated previously, it planned to launch its first services by mid-2006 and, he added, to have rolled out a wide portfolio of telecommunications services by March 2007.
SNO Telecommunications said it would finally bring about “the level of infrastructure-based competition that is required to open up the sector, to reduce the cost of doing business in South Africa, and to extend communications into the second economy. It is competition, rather than regulation, that will bring South Africa in line with the wider world of telecommunications.”
The challenge of meeting the market’s expectations was “daunting”, but the SNO would endeavour to do this over time and would communicate its plans for launching services over the next few months, it said.
The company said unlike in many developed countries, South Africa did not see the mass deployment of competitive fibre optic networks during the 1990s and its network would offer the first real alternative to the incumbent. It would also partner where necessary, i.e. where competitive infrastructure does not exist.
On the topic of broadband, the SNO said there were more than 150m fixed line broadband users around the world, but South Africa had fallen behind over the past few years. Its initial focus would have to be the deployment of backbone infrastructure, but it would work towards the growth of real broadband access for both business and consumers and would roll its broadband services out over time, the SNO said.
Source: Moneyweb
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