Neotel toasts its competition

Last Friday bore witness to another successful Mail and Guardian breakfast, and guest speaker Ajay Pandey, current CEO of new telecoms operator Neotel, toasted the competition cautiously, while unveiling plans for the expansion of the second network operator.

With not an empty seat in the house, Pandey took the opportunity to speak about the future of Neotel, not as a telecommunications company, but as a communications company.

He discussed future plans for expansion, mentioned current projects that are underway, and touched on how Neotel will be leveraging the recently announced Seacom undersea cable to expand its network and bandwidth capacity into South Africa.

Speaking on behalf of long-time sponsor of the breakfast's BI giant SAS Institute, Warren Cowan, Product and Marketing Director of SAS, said: "The platform of the breakfasts has once again proved their worth to us as a company. They bring a collection of the right-minded people around the table, and allow thought leaders and business leaders to exchange ideas, while gleaning a snapshot into an existing business practice. At SAS we have found the Mail and Guardian breakfasts of real value to our own value proposition."

Other highlights of Pandey's speech included the company's plans in the consumer market, outside of just the lucrative enterprise market, and a snapshot of the thousands of kilometres of fibre the company has already laid. While reticent to discuss pricing models and granular business plans, Pandey provided a rare peek into the company's plans just ahead of more official announcements that are set to be made this week.

While Pandey insists that the announcements that will be made this week are not an official launch, as the company has already been around for long enough not to need to be launched, he did confirm that it could be construed as a launch of some of the more official products and services it will be taking to market.

Pried by journalists and guests alike to reveal more of its plans, Pandey remained tight-lipped on some of the more concrete plans the company has for the year ahead.

The breakfast marks the final business breakfast for the year. The stage to date has played host to a number of South Africa's top business people. Speakers for this year have included: head of the reserve bank Tito Mboweni, and Maria Ramos, head of Transnet.

Ends Cowan: "SAS Institute looks forward to taking the stage with the Mail and Guardian next year, where we hope to bring even more sought-after speakers to the podium."

Also represented at the event was co-sponsor Baldessarini, the luxury men's label founded by Hugo Boss in 1993 and headed up by designer Werner Baldessarini.