Licence to dream
IS CEO Angus MacRobert believes this will help the company position itself as a “new-age” telecommunications operator and allow it to compete more effectively with Telkom.
IS wants access to undersea cables so it can get cheaper international bandwidth; it may even contribute money to the construction of a cable system. It is also confident it will be granted access to radio frequency spectrum so that it can build an alternative to Telkom’s local loop, using wireless technologies. In addition, it may lay high-speed fibre-optic cables where it makes sense to do so.
SA is the only territory where Didata operates a telecom business. Group CEO Brett Dawson says there is still an opportunity to make good money providing telecom solutions in SA and the rest of Africa.
But telecom markets in the rest of the world are too mature and too competitive, he says. “We have a good position in SA with good brand.”
However, Dawson says IS won’t build a national network to rival Telkom’s in scale. “The main market won’t be about competing at the basic infrastructure layer,” he says, adding that simply having the right to deploy its own infrastructure might be enough to ensure that licensed infrastructure suppliers such as Telkom and Neotel provide it with cheaper network access.
IS may also invest in undersea cables, Dawson says, though no decision has been made in this regard. Until now, international bandwidth has been tightly controlled by Telkom and this has resulted in high prices, something which has irked IS executives.
Didata’s Africa operations, which include IS, have performed strongly in the past couple of years. In the six months to March 2007, the group grew revenues by 22,2% to US$1,8bn. Africa’s contribution to turnover rose 48%, or more than twice the group average, to $388m.
Other regions also performed well, with Europe finally turning a small profit after years of losses.
Dawson says the group is benefiting from clients who are migrating their separate voice and data IT infrastructures onto single, converged networks.
Dawson, who is credited with leading the turnaround at Didata, says he has no plans to throw in the towel any time soon, despite what he admits is a gruelling travel schedule – he spends more than two-thirds of his time out of the country.
“I’m 42. I’m still young,” he says. “You’ve got to be out there with your partners and clients and you must be happy with that or get out of the way. Do I see myself doing this in 20 years? No chance. There will come a time when I reach my sell-by date.”
Dawson replaced long-time CEO Jeremy Ord in 2004. Ord is now group chairman and remains actively involved in the SA business.
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