It is unlikely British telecommunications giant BT Global Services will enter the local market through its own infrastructure, but will rather adhere to its strategy of partnering with key players, says one of its executives.
Keith Matthews, BT Global Services business manager for the Middle East and Africa, says it will also depend on its multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network, to offer companies with worldwide needs the ability to save money, while providing extensive voice services.
He was responding to persistent market speculation that the British group will enter the local market since it was effectively liberalised at the beginning of the year.
“We have three MPLS nodes in SA; two in Johannesburg and one in Cape Town. These nodes are hosted by local partners and so we don't see a need to build out our own infrastructure,” Matthews says.
Increased regulatory freedom and the opening up of the African markets to competition have played a part in causing BT to actively pursue more business on the continent. However, it will specialise in offering services aimed at those companies that have global requirements, he notes.
“We have developed good relationships with local companies, including Telkom, Neotel, Internet Solutions and others. Those partnerships take care of the local infrastructure requirements.”
He says BT Global Services, which is the group's business-to-business arm, will start actively promoting its unified messaging communications services to call centre operators, especially those that have a requirement to cut costs on outbound calls.
“Basically, our services are about getting costs down. Our link takes our clients to the UK and then their calls can go to any part of the world at a much reduced rate.”
The advent of a number of new undersea cable initiatives, especially down the West African coast, will help reduce international voice call costs in the longer run. However, Matthews also believes that, for the time being, specialised products of this nature are still needed.
“That is why we are now also offering our VoiceOne service in this country for the first time.”
BT Global Services is also about to start actively marketing its next-generation contact centre solutions, a virtual contact centre using the Internet cloud to link disparate parts of an organisation to form one contact centre.
“It means there is virtually one contact centre with locations in different parts of the world and this allows for a 'follow the sun' strategy,” he concludes.
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