The local telecommunications market continues to show growth, despite tighter economic conditions and smaller operational budgets becoming the norm in business. <\/p>\n
According to recent reports by research house BMI-T, this market is set to increase at an average rate of 7.9% between 2009 and 2013. Over the past year, the growth in Neotel Business, previously known as its Enterprise Business Unit, has far exceeded these market growth figures.<\/p>\n
“Neotel Business grew its revenue by 600% during Neotel’s past financial year and literally tripled its customer base,” says Stefano Mattiello, Chief Sales and Customer Service Officer at Neotel. This has resulted in a broader go-to-market strategy. “While the team continues to focus on the top tier of the market, it has now also started making inroads into the next tier of clientele,” he says.<\/p>\n
Additional growth for the Neotel Business division included the introduction of more strategic partners as well as a significant increase in products and services. “Over the past year we have introduced products and solutions such as Metro-e, WiMAX and managed services and will continue to expand on these for our customers,” he says.<\/p>\n
Neotel has also launched its Johannesburg Data Center, whilst the construction of the Cape Town one is underway. “The staff compliment within this business division has doubled over the past year to ensure that we can provide our growing customer base with the service they require,” says Mattiello.<\/p>\n
“We are confident that the new solutions we will be bringing to market during the course of the next year will illustrate the true value of broadband to a market that has often been led to believe that what they are experiencing is ‘the best there is’,” he says. <\/p>\n
Neotel has also finalised the backhaul agreement with Seacom, allowing for capacity to terminate in Johannesburg rather than Mtunzini. This will have a tremendous impact on the costs of capacity.<\/p>\n
“Currently the cost of taking capacity from Cape Town to Johannesburg is the same as taking capacity from Cape Town to London,” says Mattiello. “With this new agreement in place, the capacity will terminate in the Neotel Data Center in Midrand, which means Neotel can make the capacity more readily available to its customers,” he says.<\/p>\n
Other service providers will be able to either meet Neotel in its data centre in Midrand to purchase capacity, or Neotel can forward it on to them.<\/p>\n
The strategy for consumer customer acquisition remains to grow the numbers, but also to introduce new products and services. “We will continue to work tirelessly over the next year to significantly increase the coverage for consumer users,” Mattiello concludes. <\/p>\n