Teraco brings SA opportunity to UK hi-tech business leaders

Teraco Data Environments, the first vendor and carrier neutral data centre in South Africa, recently hosted a high profile event for senior UK executives operating in the telecommunications and IT business, at the exclusive Home House Club at Portman Square, in London.

The key focus of the event was to highlight the radical changes in South Africa`s telecoms landscape over the last year, and how these have created new opportunities for global companies.

The event featured presentations from Teraco, Seacom and T-Systems. Over 60 companies, including 15 global carriers and numerous global multinationals and ICT companies, attended.

The emergence of choice of carrier in South Africa and rollout of high-speed fibre links within the country and new undersea cables are together making the country an increasingly attractive place for businesses to invest or to place operating units.

Presentations discussed the proliferation of network players since the High Court ruling last year, which allowed all electronic communications network service (ECNS) licensees, of which there are about 500, to build networks. To date, it is believed that around 12 companies are investing in network build out. This has led to a decrease in bandwidth prices over the last seven years: from as much as $30 000 per megabytes per second (Mbps) per month for international connectivity in 2003, to $600 per Mbps per month today. Consensus was that this would fall lower in coming years.

“This event affirmed European interest in the South African economy and ICT industry,” says Tim Parsonson, group chief executive of Teraco.

“We hosted this event to bring together UK-based executives that are looking for new options for their own growth, with new partners that can provide better, more cost-effective services. The market is changing fast and companies need to keep options open. As the only neutral colocation provider in SA, Teraco looks forward to continue growing its footprint in the data centre space, as international businesses realise the benefits of colocating their data centres in South Africa`s competitive new telecoms space,” concludes Parsonson.