Telkom has content, e-billing plans

Johannesburg, 10 Oct 2001

Telkom Business Integration Services, the recently launched division of Telkom Business, says it has every intention to move into new territory, including content distribution and e-billing.

The division has already raised concerns among value-added network service (VANS) providers and Internet service providers (ISPs), who fear that the combination of Telkom`s exclusive access to voice services and a focused e-business group could put them out of business.

Rikus Matthyser, the executive heading up Business Integration, says it is almost inevitable that content distribution will be launched.

"Why pay for a copper telephone line and pay for a satellite dish when you can have both with DSL?" he asks.

When Telkom introduces ADSL services, as it is expected to do during the course of next year, Business Integration expects to launch a pay-per-view service for streaming video and audio.

Several other businesses will be launched before that becomes a reality. However, Matthyser says an electronic bill presentment and payment service is likely to be available before Christmas, and the company plans to start acting as a certification authority and offering related security services shortly after the festive season.

A switch translating between EDI transactions to XML and vice versa is planned for early next year, about the same time as the Telkom unified messaging platform will be in place.

Then there is hosted e-procurement on the SAP platform and electronic shopfronts.

"Telcos have never been called ASPs [application service providers] before," says Matthyser, "yet we have been doing this for years."

The pride of the group is the Telkom data centre in Centurion. Matthyser says it is rated among the top five of its kind in the world, with 2 800 square meters used as the basis to run 275 applications on seven operating systems across 60 000 devices.

Hosted customers willing to pay the price can also make use of Telkom`s disaster recovery site in Cape Town, effectively putting their data and fail-safe at opposite ends of the country.

Competing with VANS

Such capabilities and expansion are exactly what concern VANS operators. Yet while Matthyser says Telkom Business Integration Services does intend to infringe on VANS territory he does not believe it will kill competition.

"VANS are quicker and more flexible, you could say they are more in the customer`s face," he says. "But you can`t have both quick and economies of scale."

He argues that the trend towards mega-companies in the IT space is driven by a fundamental need to eliminate costly inefficiencies. And with computing becoming a utility, utilities are best positioned to be the service hub.

"Are we going to wipe VANS out? No. Are we going to play in that space? Yes. But niche players will always exist."

But while Telkom may be competition to VANS, the reverse is not true.

"VANS don`t play in our space," he says, pointing out that no VANS operator has a data centre approaching the scale of the Telkom facility, or access to the same kind of capital, or the same number of qualified professionals. "Global telcos aren`t competing with VANS, they are competing with each other."