BT wants more of the same after vigorous 300% growth in SA
Global telecoms company BT hopes to repeat the vigorous 300% growth it has achieved in SA over the past two years, with its staff expected to outstrip the target they have set of doubling the company's revenue.
BT's South African branch celebrated its 15th anniversary last week. It carries voice and data traffic for 2000 customer sites in SA, up from 700 two years ago. That surge is repeatable as BT "is taking SA seriously," said Francois Barrault, the CEO of BT Global Services. Healthy economic growth was driving significant industrial development that justified investing more heavily in SA, he said.
Its 85 employees would target customers in the finance, mining and broadcasting sectors, said Brian Armstrong, GM for the Middle East and Africa. Its wins would come by working for local companies as they expand around the world and by serving global players that open offices in SA, with both types of customers demanding a high quality of telecoms services for all their global branches.
As well as chasing new customers, BT is lobbying the government to create legislation more conducive to competition in the telecoms sector.
Working in SA with its telecoms regulations was not easy but would get easier, Barrault said. "If you want to attract investors there are some parameters like security, education, lifestyle, health and the quality of the digital infrastructure. If SA wants the boom it deserves it needs better infrastructure through competition and more innovation."
One concern is the high cost and slow delivery of bandwidth from Telkom, as crippling laws have forced operators in SA to run their communications over Telkom's backbone. The problem has handicapped the cellular networks too, and both MTN and Vodacom are installing their own fibre optic cables to gain more capacity in urban areas.
BT has not decided whether installing its own backbone is financially viable. As a first step it is negotiating to buy bandwidth from the new fixed line operator, Neotel, the new state-owned telecoms carrier, InfraCo, or from MTN and Vodacom. The increasing number of options available were sharpening Telkom's mind and lowering its prices, Armstrong said. The lack of response from Neotel had been disappointing, he said.
BT is negotiating an empowerment deal to conform to the black ownership requirements to help it play a larger role in SA's telecoms sector. Armstrong said BT was looking at several options, including selling equity.
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