ECN pips Neotel to fixed-line

By Damaria Senne for ECN
Johannesburg, 23 Jul 2007

Local value-added network service provider ECN Telecommunications has beaten Neotel and other providers, such as Internet Solutions and Vox Telecoms, to the punch by being the first to offer a fixed-line telephone alternative, offering connectivity across all networks.

The company says it is already on its way to providing competition for Telkom.

ECN says it has a bilateral interconnection agreement with Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and Cell C. "As of this morning, ECN can offer business and residential customers full inbound and outbound fixed-line commercial services, on a nationwide scale, competing with Telkom," says ECN CEO John Holdsworth.

Until now, business and residential fixed-line telephone subscribers could only use Telkom services. Neotel, licensed in 2005 as the second national operator, has yet to begin offering consumer telecommunications services. Neotel previously stated it would offer consumer services following the conclusion of a mid-year trial this year.

Value-added network service providers, such as Internet Solutions, Vox Telecom, Storm Telecoms and Verizon Business, also offer voice services to corporate customers. However, they do not yet interconnect with all operators, limiting their ability to provide connectivity across the board.

Many providers blame MTN for the delay in their ability to offer full-scale fixed-line connectivity across all operators, saying the mobile operator offers unfair interconnection terms.

"While they were complaining about the difficulty in interconnecting with MTN, we were busy signing the interconnect agreement," says Holdsworth.

ECN signed off physical interconnect with MTN on Friday afternoon, having completed all interconnect testing.

Tough times for Telkom

Holdsworth says ECN has already begun to take away some of Telkom's corporate clients. "We have some of the players in the corporate market moving their biggest corporate customers onto our platform."

He names a well-known corporate company, with a R13 million a month telecommunications budget, as one of the organisations migrating to ECN. "We are hurting Telkom today," he says.

In terms of providing fixed-line services to consumers, Holdsworth says ECN already has contracts in place with infrastructure providers, which will enable it to immediately provide residential services.

ECN operations manager Jeremy Macdonald notes that more competition is coming, as more providers sign interconnection agreements with all the telecommunications network providers, enabling them to provide fixed-line services.