Neotel, South Africa’s second fixed-line phone operator, aims to be profitable by the end of its 2011 financial year in March 2012, the company head told Business Report newspaper.
Sunil Joshi, Neotel’s new chief executive, told the newspaper that the company would focus on growing market share by three percentage points by continuing to target the enterprise segment, which includes fellow telecommunications carriers and the corporate sector.
Unlisted Neotel, which is controlled by India’s Tata Communications, said that by the 2012 fiscal year it plans to grow revenue in its enterprise segment by 30% year on year.
Neotel has set itself ambitious targets for 2011, which includes a 50% growth in retail customers. It also aims to spend R500m rand on infrastructure this year.
The group revenue for the year to March was R2-billion.
Neotel, which launched in 2006 after long delays, has yet to turn a profit.
The company competes for corporate clients with Telkom and Internet Solutions — a unit of Dimension Data, and mobile phone group MTN and Vodacom’s business unit.
Neotel is rolling out wireless and fibre-optic networks to snatch fixed-line revenues from Telkom, which recently launched its own mobile unit 8.ta. — Reuters