Johannesburg, 13 Aug 2007
The Tertiary Education Network (Tenet) last week announced the three providers shortlisted to run pilot VOIP solutions at three of the network's institutions.
Internet Solutions, Orion Telecom and Storm will pilot solutions at one institution each for the next few months.
Tenet is a not-for-profit entity that runs a national research and education network on behalf of 40-odd research and educational institutions in SA and surrounds. It is responsible for securing connectivity and associated services for the institutions it serves, and which control it. These institutions include all 23 of SA's universities.
Tenet is procuring VOIP services for use by these institutions, as part of a project that is being headed up and managed by Tenet consultant Sybrand Brink. Collectively, the institutions use 15 million voice minutes per month of telephony services, says Tenet CTO Andrew Alston.
"Representatives of 25 institutions participated in a special workshop to evaluate proposals submitted by seven VOIP vendors. The proposals had been submitted in response to a formal request for proposals that specified the information proposers should provide and the evaluation scheme that would be applied," says Tenet CEO Duncan Martin.
"Tenet is pleased to announce that Internet Solutions, Orion Telecom and Storm scored highest in the evaluation. Tenet has invited each of these three companies to conduct an intensive trial at one of the interested institutions. Tenet will consider the appointment of one or more of these vendors once the trials have been completed," he says.
The trial will run until October, and, depending on how many of Tenet's 40-odd institutions sign up, could result in a R150 million per year worth of business for the provider or providers that win the deal.
"Each vendor will get a single institution," says Alston. "Those institutions will then report back to the original group of representatives that was involved in the selection of these three vendors. At that point, a decision will be taken to appoint one or more of these vendors."
Tenet recently released a call for expressions for interest for the provision of connectivity to 100-odd research and educational sites in SA and surrounds, worth a potential R192 million over a two-year period.
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