SA's newly launched second fixed-line operator Neotel expects to start offering domestic voice and data services to businesses in January, a senior company official said on Friday.
But Neotel, the first company to take on former fixed-line monopoly Telkom, said it would not launch voice and Internet services for consumers until the second quarter - slightly later than an initial March target.
"Our national network will still only be switched on about a month and a half away," Neotel executive head of strategy Angus Hay told a conference on broadband Internet in Johannesburg.
"So towards the beginning of the year we will start delivering national services."
Neotel is already selling wholesale international connectivity to SA's three mobile phone operators by using the network owned by its strategic shareholder Videsh Sanchar Nigam, a unit of Indian software-to-cars conglomerate Tata.
Hay said Neotel's own network would initially only cover the main cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.
Analysts say Neotel will struggle to make good on its pledge to cut tariffs and roll-out communications to the poor because it will still have to pay Telkom for access to the network of lines into South African homes and offices.
Neotel said in August it would invest more than R11 billion in the next decade to try to snatch market share from Telkom.
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