The past financial year has seen Telkom notching up its best performance since it was awarded its licence in May 1997, with the telecommunications giant meeting 15 of its 16 licence targets and rolling out a three-year cumulative total of 1,6 million new phone lines.
Speaking during today`s launch of the Company`s annual results for 1999/2000, Telkom`s CEO Sizwe Nxasana said that over 1 million of these new lines were in underserviced areas, putting Telkom 90 000 lines ahead of its cumulative delivery target for these areas.
"Similarly, we have already provided first-time service to 328 more villages than our licence target. We are 17 860 ahead of our target for new payphone installations, and we are exceeding our licence target for replacing non-digital lines by almost one million lines," he said.
Nxasana added that Telkom had dramatically stepped up the pace of its network modernisation programme. The Company upgraded 350 440 lines during the past year alone, meaning that almost 99% of its 5,5 million phone lines were now connected to digital exchanges.
"Line digitisation is an important part of our network modernisation programme, as this is the platform on which we can build value-added services like caller line identification, electronic call answering and innovative billing systems like per-second billing. Our three-year total stands at just over one million lines, against the cumulative licence target of 98 000."
Nxasana said Telkom`s efforts to make its network more resilient were paying off, as the Company was now recording 11% fewer faults than two years ago in spite of monsoon-like weather across large parts of the country earlier this year.
"Even though the flooding pushed our residential fault rate slightly above the licence target, we still managed to improve our residential fault rate by 13% since 1997/98," he said.
The past year also saw Telkom achieving the two licence targets - repairing business and residential telephone faults within 48 hours - that it had missed in 1998/99.
"In real terms this means that over the past two years, we have achieved a steady 17,1% improvement in repairing business faults and a 9,7% improvement for residential faults," said Nxasana.
He said that Telkom expected to realise further significant improvements in the near future, through projects like its recently-opened National Network Operations Centre (NNOC), the implementation of a new end-to-end customer delivery process, and higher line-revenue generation through digital, network-based product development.
"The NNOC is an ultra-modern facility which will provide an unprecedented level of seamless and robust service across the country. It gives us an up-to-the-second, real-time visual summary of the status of Telkom`s entire network.
"This facility compares favourably with similar centres run by some of the world`s top telecommunications companies. The complex`s emergency restoration and control centre has already been successfully tested during our smooth transition to the new millenium," said Nxasana.
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