ITNewsAfrica.com chatted with Tim Walter, General Manager Products at Nashua Mobile, about the company’s future strategy.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Recently, Nashua Mobile launched a new division, EasiSolutions. What is the motivation behind this move and what is the role of EasiSolutions in Nashua’s strategy for South Africa?
Nashua Mobile: Over the past six months we saw new interest from players in the industry like Vodacom Business or Internet Solution for business tailored services, offering more top connectivity solutions.
Nashua Mobile’s positioning in the market is one of choice – we have a number of partners whose products we resell to a number of customers and corporates. We looked at easier ways to market our products to customers and allow them to compare various offers, so we are focusing now on MTN, Vodacom Business, Neotel, Internet Solutions and Telkom.
We got an extensive offer and packaging it in the form of EasiSolutions allows us to present it to our clients in an understandable and comparable way.
ITNewsAfrica.com: What can Nashua Mobile offer particularly to SMEs?
Nashua Mobile: From a connectivity point of view, we have certain products specifically aimed at SMEs, particularly the uncapped ADSL products. WiMAX services are also taken up by SME customers who need coverage in areas where there are high numbers of incidents like copper thefts and WiMAX proves the best alternative.
Also, we are in the final stages of releasing a number of hosted products like Microsoft Host Exchange and BlackBerry hosted base which will allow companies to have full-base functionality coupled with hosting capabilities.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Where do you see as the most important trends in the South African market – fixed voice solutions, mobile and Internet access, hosted solutions or messaging?
Nashua Mobile: I think now there is a race for space with regards to connectivity, particularly with the cost of bandwidth dropping as we speak. Most SMEs and even corporates are looking to upgrade their capacity. Once that is done, hosted solutions and cloud computing will be on demand and more feasible.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Will Nashua Mobile lower prices, now with the added bandwidth capacity, after the launch of several undersea cables?
Nashua Mobile: A lot of our products are on-sold so if there are any price reductions, we pass to our customers, whether it’s a wireless or fixed solution. Then we have our home-grown ADSL products which use MTN business bandwidth. We are actively looking at our business models for uncapped ADSL products which would lower the cost per MB. We are on selling the previous genre of uncapped ADSL, offered on premium, so we expect the more affordable, next generation solutions to be available at the end of May this year. It would be comparable to the likes of other competitors’ offers on the market.
ITNewsAfrica: Speaking of mobile technology, is the company planning to introduce 4G or LTE services?
Nashua Mobile: MTN, Vodacom and Cell C are busy with the LTE equipment deployment at the moment so we’ll be offering all those services. We are looking into starting to offer the modems and routers that will be capable of reaching 21.6MB/s which is the current benchmark.
The big thing for SMEs is to marry the particular application with the right speed. For e-mail this might be overkill, but for video streaming and multimedia it’s the best choice.
ITNewsAfrica.com: So if you have to sum up, what would be Nashua Mobile’s strategy for this year?
Nashua Mobile: The strategy for 2010 is offering existing and new customers a broad range of connectivity offerings at a variety of prices, but we do believe in tailor-made solution for clients’ needs. As I mentioned earlier, this year is all about getting connectivity to clients, to upgrade their bandwidth capacity and for years to come, we will focus on providing hosted application solutions behind that.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Are there any plans of expanding to other African countries?
Nashua Mobile: No, it’s not in our strategy right now. South Africa is a big enough market, we understand this market and we find massive opportunities here.
