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MWEB Africa
On April 21, 2009, we acquired a 100%
interest in MWEB Africa Limited, which
owns approximately 88% of ASFAT
Communications Limited, and a 75%
interest in MWEB Namibia (Pty) Ltd, for
R498 million. MWEB Africa is a group of
companies offering internet services and its
own VSAT access services in sub-Saharan
Africa (excluding South Africa). MWEB
Africa is obliged to acquire the additional
12% of AFSAT Communications Limited
and we are currently in negotiations to
purchase such shares.
MWEB Africa’s VSAT service is mostly
focused on the corporate and enterprise
markets and is branded iWay. Its VSAT
services are using satellite teleport facilities
in SA, the USA and Europe. The company
had almost 20,175 customers at
March 31, 2009.
The group is headquartered in Mauritius
with operations in Nigeria, Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia and
Zimbabwe and an agency arrangement in
Botswana. There are distributors in 26 sub-
Saharan African countries.
Other developments
Mobile strategy
Mobile Strategy – South Africa
The recent liberalisation in the licensing
regime, advancements in convergence
technology and termination of the
Vodafone shareholders’ agreement provide
Telkom with the opportunity to enter the
mobile market. We believe that an
integrated fixed-mobile operator is well
positioned to react to, and take advantage
of the future requirements of our customers.
By developing an integrated fixed-mobile
offering Telkom will seek to leverage its
customer base, marketing, logistics and
distribution channels to increase its share of
voice revenue. In addition, internet access
demands are increasingly requiring
mobility. An integrated bundled offering
would offer superior speeds and quality
through the fixed-line, including the
advantages of mobility when required by
the customer. Mobility provides cost
efficiencies and the opportunity to
consolidate traffic onto Telkom’s network.
Currently mobile customers are
experiencing the effects of highly
congested networks. Telkom intends to use
the strengths of its fixed-line network to
differentiate its mobile service on quality
with a fully converged array of products
and services. Our Next Generation
Network and access to the latest
technologies will provide further value to
our customers.
Telkom has rolled out 141 W-CDMA sites
in major metropolitan areas throughout
South Africa. Our initial focus has been on
theft, breakages and incident-prone areas,
customers waiting for service and
greenfield areas where Telkom has no
copper infrastructure. In essence, the
W-CDMA technology allows Telkom to
deploy fixed-line lookalike services with
regional fixed numbering plans instead of
deploying copper, especially in high
copper theft areas or areas where copper
deployment is not feasible or too slow to
roll out. This roll-out will be extended to
rural areas and to replace expensive to
maintain legacy equipment.
Our move into offering a fully fledged
mobile service is dependent on the
finalisation of market research and the
outcome of pilot and customer trials
planned for the end of 2009.
We are however aware of the power of
the entrenched mobile companies. With
this in mind, Telkom will not commit to
further capital expenditure other than that
focused on reducing costs before the
Company has completed its market
research. Future build will be based on
maximising our current infrastructure and
subscriber numbers in order to reduce
operational and build costs and improve
value add as far as possible.
Key Next Generation Network, capacity
and product developments
Telkom is in the fourth year of its Next
Generation Network (NGN) build out
programme. Customer demand and global
Telkom Annual Report 2009 97
standards necessitate the provision of
services and particularly bandwidth that is
only possible utilising the intelligence of an
NGN system.
Our NGN build-out achievements are as
follows:
• In the national layer of the transport
network, bandwidth capability has
increased by more than 500% in
bandwidth and automatic self-healing
re-routing of bandwidth has been
introduced based on customer service
levels.
• Optical fibre deployment has been
accelerated and Telkom now has
around 128,000 cable kilometres of
optical fibre in the ground, enough to
circle the world three times.
• Dense Wave Division Multiplexing
(DWDM) systems have been introduced
between major metropolitan centres
such as Gauteng and Durban. These
systems can carry 40 10GB signals
over a single fibre pair.
• Metro Ethernet has been deployed in
the major metros, including Cape Town,
Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria and
Port Elizabeth.
• Integrated Multi-Service Access
Multiplexer (IMAX) has been deployed
to carry narrowband and broadband
services for Wireline legacy and
converged systems.
• A Network Interactive Voice Response
system has been introduced, giving
Telkom and its corporate customers the
ability to use advanced speech services
such as automated speech recognition
and text-to-speech applications.
• The SAT-3/WASC/SAFE undersea
cable system, which connects South
Africa to Europe and the Far East, has
been upgraded to treble the amount of
international bandwidth available.
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