Neotel squares up to Telkom

The second national operator, Neotel, will tackle Telkom by providing superior service levels, and focus less on providing more cost-effective solutions.

This was the message presented yesterday by Neotel's head of enterprise sales, Vishal Dhume, speaking on day four of the State IT Agency's GovTech conference, at Sun City.

"We will focus more on service parameters, rather than purely on cost," he told delegates, promising that Neotel is still on track to bring consumer services to the nation by the middle of next year.

He assured delegates that Neotel will "operate at levels which are going to be affordable [to local consumers]".

Using over 1 000km of Transtel's urban fibre networks, and about 9 000km of Eskom Telecoms' fibre, which will provide inter-city and countrywide access, Neotel will leverage its business arrangements with Transnet and Eskom, he noted.

Eventually, Dhuma explained, everything will tend towards Internet Protocol (IP). "IP is emerging as the de facto bearer of all future services."

As this happens, more and more companies will consider outsourcing their network management to an external service provider - an approach he refers to as integrated rather than fragmented.

Neotel, currently in its earliest phase of life, will gradually evolve and become a true carrier of managed services that will offer businesses reliability and greater cost control, Dhuma stated.