State-owned Broadband Infraco is preparing for a new dawn of its own, with the entity preparing to “flex its muscle more” and become more assertive as it pursues its mandate more aggressively.
Infraco CEO Andrew Matseke says that the group, historically plagued by significant financial losses, plans to grow into “something bigger”.
“We may have been shy in the past, but we are coming out of the shell now to show who we really are and what we are capable of as an entity,” he adds.
Nearly two years into his tenure as CEO, Matseke believes the company is well equipped to launch South Africa and its neighbouring countries headlong into fully fledged broadband connectivity.
“We have high hopes and are backed by facts that we can truly perform on all fronts,” he explains, pointing out that there are signs of success emerging from the “dramatic growth” of Infraco’s customer base over the past three years.
In 2017, Infraco had a customer base of 33, growing to 57 wholesale customers in 2019.
Some of this growth emerged from licensed entities buying mostly long-haul connectivity or connectivity from one location to one of the data centres.
Further, the operator is experiencing growth in the Southern African Development Community region, with competitive pricing and a connection to the borders of South Africa’s neighbouring countries, namely Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland.
The group is also a consortium member in the 14 530 km West Africa Cable System, linking South Africa and the UK.
While “pleased” by the strides made to fulfil its twin mandate of improving market efficiency in the long-distance connectivity segment by increasing available network infrastructure, and making capacity available to stimulate private-sector innovation in telecommunications services and content offerings, Infraco plans to expand its scope of operations into value-added services.
“Infraco is looking into acquiring an Electronic Communications Service licence that will enable it to offer services such as voice services [and] virtual private network services and generally move up the value chain,” he says.
“In pushing to expand the availability and affordability of access to electronic communications in South Africa, Infraco also seeks to be more competitive, offering . . . innovative products to its ever-growing base of customers, while also ensuring that previously underserviced areas benefit from the provision of electronic communications.”
“We are seeing [a] turnaround – not just in sales performance, but the performance of the entire business,” he says, adding that the future promises even better growth prospects for the agency.
Infraco is confident of the role it can play in South Africa’s – and Africa’s – pursuit of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR); however, regional cooperation and partnerships around the sort of solutions that deliver 4IR will be critical.
“We need regional cooperation and partnerships around the sort of solutions that deliver 4IR. South African players that provide 4IR solutions need to partner with their counterparts in our neighbouring countries in order to have massive results,” Matseke concludes.