Targeting SA's principle business parks and multi tenant buildings, storm is offering high-speed Internet access to tenants of participating sites at costs that are a fraction of those normally associated with 'always on' connectivity.
Cape Town's Black River Park is SA's first business park to take part in storm's new campus programme.
By participating in the programme, companies in the Black River Park complex are able to take advantage of a high-speed Internet connection at costs that are at least 30% lower than typical ISP charges. Storm is able to provide such low rates to all users by running fibre around the park to a dedicated storm point of presence within the park, so the tenants are routed directly onto storm's own network, thereby completely avoiding Telkom's network and associated charges.
Tim Wyatt-Gunning, managing director of storm, says: "Small businesses in SA have been unable to have an 'always on' connectivity to the Internet at realistic prices. This has prevented many companies from making the most of the technology that's now available. Storm's latest solution means that small enterprises need no longer be at a technical disadvantage when compared to larger organisations, if they are situated in office parks and multi tenant building."
Mike Vietri, director of Black River Park Investments, the company that administers Black River Park, says: "Internet access is a business necessity, but dialling up to send and receive e-mail is not a viable option for most companies. Therefore, it is very important for us to be able to offer clients unlimited bandwidth and access to the Internet as it is becoming an important criteria when deciding on office space."
Rudi Junge, managing director of Cinegate Africa, a local movie equipment company situated at Black River Park, says: "Our company used to access the Internet through an ISDN line from Telkom. We decided to become a storm customer because it has become increasingly important for the business to have a permanent connection to the Internet and storm's solution was by far the most cost-effective. I have already seen an improvement in productivity since all our staff members have had permanent access to e-mail and the Web."
"With deregulation hopefully just around the corner, and voice-over-IP almost a reality, the storm campus solution also prepares the office park and its tenants for the future. Once it is legal to run voice over data networks, all the companies within Black River Park will be able to take advantage of this cost saving service," says Wyatt-Gunning.
Black River Park is the first of three sites that will offer storm Access services to tenants by the end of June 2003.
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Storm is the South African retail brand for STWS, a leading low-cost voice and data service provider for the African market. Focusing exclusively on the needs of business users, storm was launched in Cape Town in June 1999. Storm's goal is to challenge the major players in the telecoms market by consistently providing innovative voice and data products and services that help companies to communicate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Storm currently provides over 4 000 South African businesses with a range of high quality voice and data communication services including storm international, storm cellular, storm access, storm fax and storm sms. Storm international lowers the cost of a business's international calls through its latest callback technology. Storm cellular and storm fax reduce the cost of calls to cellular phones and the sending of faxes. Storm offers Internet connectivity, which includes domain name registration, Web-site design and server hosting services. Furthermore, storm is positioning itself to offer converged voice and data services on one network, once deregulation of the local telecommunications market takes place.
Owning and managing its own network, storm will continue to differentiate itself in the South African market by providing value-added services such as its newly launched Customer Zone and VOIP (once legalised).
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