Independent data, voice and Internet protocol provider Liquid Telecom South Africa is shifting its focus inward with plans to inject some R250-million into its local network after its strategy yielded success in other African countries.

In an attempt to replicate earlier successes in other African countries, the group aimed to reposition the South African business from being a springboard to the rest of Africa to being a revenue-generating operation, said Liquid Telecom South Africa CEO Willem Marais.

South Africa had traditionally been leveraged as a transit into African States to its north.

“That has changed this year,” Liquid group CEO Nic Rudnick told media on the sidelines of AfricaCom,  in Cape Town.

The group, which had more than 20 000 km of fibre – connected to five subsea cable systems – across several African countries, would integrate to-be-deployed fibre into Liquid Telecom South Africa’s existing network.

The initial focus would be on expanding the fibre network across South Africa’s northern provinces, before extending the terrestrial infrastructure into neighbouring countries, further diversifying the business’s geographical footprint under its wholesale model offering to mobile and fixed-line operators.

Over the last year, Liquid had continued to build its network at a rapid pace, with pending undisclosed acquisitions now set to expand the group’s footprint by three additional countries by the first quarter of the year, Rudnick noted.

Meanwhile, Liquid launched CrashPlan - a cost-effective, easy-to-use cloud-based back-up service.

With more than 95% of data in Africa stored on end-user devices, companies remained vulnerable to data loss on the back of potential damages or stolen or lost devices.

Hardware or system failure accounted for 44% of lost data, while human error, software corruption, viruses and natural disasters accounted for 32%, 14%, 7% and 3% respectively.

Further, in addition to the risk of theft, 43% of company laptops were lost offsite and 33% were lost in transit.

Liquid now offered unlimited backups that could be restored to any device anywhere.

Available in every country in which the group operated, including Botswana, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, CrashPlan enabled local background online storage to specialist servers or one of Liquid’s storage nodes, with end-to-end security, under a partnership with US-based Code 42.