What Neotel will offer you before March next year
A few minutes before Neotel’s executive head: strategy and products, Angus Hay, was set to speak at last week’s MyADSL 2007 Broadband Conference, one of the organisers stood up and apologised to the 271 people gathered at Vodaworld. “Sorry…,” said Rudolph Muller. “Neotel is late.”
“They’re just about to arrive,” he teased. The crowd erupted with laughter.
Muller, who couldn’t let an opportunity as good as this pass, went on: “Their arrival is imminent.”
Neotel’s speaker was indeed running a few minutes late. Being a good sport, after getting there, Hay asked mischievously: “Have you been waiting for me?”
South Africans are frustrated. Most people you speak to are tired of waiting (and waiting and waiting some more) for an alternative to Telkom. Some pessimists don’t even believe we’ll ever see a competitor.
But, Neotel is real. Don’t take my word for it, ask Hay.
In the past few months, it has secured a giant contract with the State Information Technology Agency, the company has signed up 40 blue-chip clients, it has access to the SAT-3 undersea cable (something previously restricted to Telkom) and there is a real pilot network. Wholesale and corporate services, including NeoVoice, NeoVPN, NeoInternet, NeoLink and NeoLink Global are live.
And, the market has started to react to the competition. Think price cuts from Telkom, extensive fibre rollout by Vodacom and MTN… Hay smiles when he says that Neotel is “prepared to take credit for some of the changes that have happened”.
I want a Neotel phone!
But when can you get a Neotel line? Well, firstly there won’t be a “line” in the traditional sense. There’ll be no more waiting for the now-trademark Telkom bakkie to roll up to your front gate when you’re not there.
The trickiest part of rolling out services (wholesale, corporate, etc), is obviously the consumer offering. Neotel is currently running a pilot CDMA (code division multiple access) wireless network. It sounds complicated, but simply put it’s a different type of mobile technology (in the same way that GSM networks and 3G cellular networks differ from each other). This is “not an experiment, and not a test licence” Hay points out.
The operator will launch consumer services in the first quarter of next year.
Hay confirms these will be rolled out to the major metropolitan areas (Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban). “We have to focus where we can deliver,” Hay says.
Something we, as consumers, fail to understand is that you cannot build and launch an entire phone company in a few months, or even a year. Telkom (in some form or another) has had just shy of 100 years to build, expand and continue modifying its network.
By running the pilot “double-play” network, Neotel is able to clear out all the bugs.
It has also overcome challenges with spectrum interface, worked on its IP-based backhaul, got its credit vetting model working, and refined the consumer “welcome kit”.
The company is also waiting (rather wisely) until after Christmas to launch any new services. Who would launch in November anyway?
The two Neotel offerings
Essentially, Neotel will offer two options: a basic internet and voice phone or a high-speed internet and voice telephone. The company is also proud that it will deliver its services via the world’s first EV-DO (evolution-data optimised) desk phone.
The basic service includes SMS functionality and provides 156kbps internet access. Hay sees this as a replacement for current dial-up users. The high-speed unit will offer access at between 2.4Mbps and 3.1Mbps (with an average speed of around 300kbps to 700kbps due to backhaul constraints). It will offer high-quality, carrier grade voice. Hay says you could compare the internet speed of this service to roughly that of an HSDPA device.
There will be value-adds, like e-mail, some enhanced voice services and basic content. Hay is adamant Neotel is not going to be a “content provider” a la Telkom Media or Do Broadband. Besides, Neotel has got enough to worry about! However, he believes that “content is going to drive the usage of services in the long term”.
This means (if you live in major areas in SA), you should be able to become a Neotel subscriber before the end of March 2008. Something that many people have been waiting for (and moaning about for years).
What next for Neotel after the launch of consumer services? It’s set to launch hosting and data centre services for corporates in the first quarter and wants to roll out wireless broadband and metro ethernet in 2008.
The rumble is real.
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