Orion, Tema formalise BEE deal

Johannesburg, 19 Jul 2004

Last week saw the formalising of a black empowerment partnership between Orion Telecom and Tema Telecoms.

Tema Telecoms, a black-empowered value-added reseller, has had an ad hoc relationship with Orion for over two years, but the current arrangement formalises the company`s role, making it both Orion`s sole empowerment partner and its biggest agent.

Orion is a supplier of telephony solutions - including least-cost routing (LCR) - and has taken a legal stance against Telkom in numerous court cases.

"The partnership will entail Orion providing both a skills and technology transfer, in terms of training and implementation, as well as a management skills transfer, as they need to show us how best to manage their equipment," says Tema Telecom director, Trevor Theledi.

"From our side, our biggest value-add for Orion will be the public sector opportunities that arise, as Tema already has contracts with four provincial governments and expects to sign contracts with three more shortly. We also have contracts with several municipalities and local government departments."

He says Tema hopes to aggregate the rate at which skills transfer will take place, as the company expects to expand at an exponential rate and as this occurs, will need to have enough skills to deploy.

"This partnership between Orion and Tema seeks to address the need for BEE strategy roll-out by big businesses as recognised by the ICT BEE charter," says Orion Telecom director, Jacques du Toit.

"Empowerment is recognised as an imperative to improve the financial well-being of all South Africans, so we are pleased with this initiative as we believe it will add real value to the market while improving the services Tema has to offer."

Theledi says that in terms of future projects, the companies hope to get involved with the second national operator (SNO) in some manner, and that discussions have been taking place at various levels.

"Of course, conceptually the SNO is a great idea, but the innumerable delays it has experienced - and continues to experience - could hamper its effectiveness."

He says Tema expects to achieve "scary" growth over the next couple of years, and he "knows" the company will take a large chunk of the public sector market.

"Before empowerment can truly work, you need to have a good business model, and you can then use empowerment to leverage further business," says Theledi.