Welcoming
Competition
[
BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION LIMITED (BTCL)
]
The Botswana
Telecommunications
Corporation began life
as a nationalised entity
to oversee the country’s
telecommunications services.
But as Paul Taylor tells us,
as the company becomes
privatised it is also becoming so
much more.
THE BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION WAS ESTABLISHED BY AN ACT OF PARLIAMENT, THE BTC ACT, IN 1980. IT WAS TO BE A BODY CORPORATE TO PROVIDE, DEVELOP, OPERATE AND MANAGE BOTSWANA’S NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES.It continued in this way until its monopoly was repealed in 1996 by an amendment to the Telecommunications Act that introduced competition into the telecommunications arena, and not long afterwards, in the year 2000, a Privatisation Policy was brought in that would reform the company to improve its efficiency, productivity, and above all the competitiveness of the public sector.
This reached its climax in the BTC (Transition) Act in 2008, to assist in the privatisation process. As the telecommunications industry was further liberalised and a new regulatory authority introduced , the BTC mobile network beMOBILE, was established. In now reaches about 90% of the population.
On 1st November 2012, BTC was converted from a statutory body into a public company limited by shares and renamed Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited(BTCL)
Though the Corporation is still 100 percent government owned, the expectation is that post asset separation, an Initial Public Offering
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BTCL Managing Director Paul Taylor
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[
BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION LIMITED (BTCL)
]
(IPO) will be made resulting in 49% of the company being listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange and held by Botswana or Botswana owned entities.
Today an increasingly modern and competitive BTCL ready for privatisation, is a major player in Botswana’s telecommunications industry. Privatising BTCL should make the company agile and more responsive
to customer needs and requirements
“We’re an organisation of about 950 people now,” explains Paul Taylor, the company’s Managing Director. “We have a turnover of over 1.5 billion pula. We are the incumbent fixed network operator with almost 95% of the market share.
We are the majority shareholder with about 60-65% broadband market share and we were the third mobile company to enter the market.
As the company moves towards privatisation, and the competition growing, BTCL has had to work hard to maintain its leading position in the market.
“Going forward our strategy is built around the fixed and mobile convergence approach,” Taylor explains. “No one does all the things we do in all the places we do them. We have the best network in the country fixed and mobile.”
It’s an approach that has been working well for the company.
“We’ve been doing really well actually,” Taylor says. “We achieved our budget, completed the separation exercise whereby we’ve been separating off the backbone of the network into its own company, and most of the preparatory work for privatisation has been done.”
While privatisation might seem like a huge step for the organisation, Taylor , a seasoned Business Leader with over 30 years of experience in the telecoms sector, believes it isn’t making a huge difference to the running of the company itself.
“I don’t think it will change the fundamentals,” he reflects. “We’ll have new board members potentially, what drives us are customers are the regulatory and commercial environment, changing rapidly, but it’s been
“ Botswana is
about the size
of France with
a population
of 2 million
and hostile
environments
outside
the major
conurbations.”
P124 I BUSINESS FOCUS I ISSUE 47Iwww.businessfocusmagazine.com
BTCL sales executive in one of the many service centres spread across the country.
[
BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION LIMITED (BTCL)
]
changing rapidly for 12 years the field’s been developing so quickly.”
A VISION FOR A NEW FUTURE
In this time of transition the company is still sticking closely to its over-arching vision, one that has seen the corporation prosper as the leading telecommunications entity in the country. The first aspect of that vision is of course, team work.
The company is one team, and the success of one within that team is a
success for the whole organisation.
“Our policy is to hire locally as far as we’re able,” says Taylor who specialises in leading transformation efforts whilst at the same time delivering on challenging short-term budget targets.
Taylor who now has led Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited for nearly four years has seen the business achieve considerable change re-positioning itself ready for privatisation.
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Connecting people through
partnership in technology
Telecommunications companies are a key partner to every business in today’s digital and Internet age. They are the glue that connects people, partners and companies.
It is with this that Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) has selected leading value-added distributor WestconGroup Southern Africa as its strategic business partner for all of its networking requirements. As a partner to the business, WestconGroup provides BTC with a host of Cisco products and value-added services, acting as an extension of its IT team. The agreement, which will extend over a four-year period, sees a dedicated on-premise Westcon team provide onsite Cisco services to the company.
As a strategic partner, earmarked as BTC’s supplier of choice for all of its Cisco services, Westcon is working tirelessly to help BTC continue on its path of excellence in the provision of world-class communication, information and content services.
For more information about WestconGroup Southern Africa’s extensive portfolio of category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure, data centre, cloud, consumer and security solutions contact XXX.
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Westcon QP 062015.indd 1 2015-06-22 12:01:03 PM
[
BOTSWANA TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION LIMITED (BTCL)
]
Contemporaneously the organisation has begun the transformation journey re-aligning its assets and resources to better deliver against it’s fixed mobile convergence strategy.
“Within the company there are less than five expatriates. We’re investing substantial money in management and technology. Senior management is being sent to the University of Stellenbosch to attend a special course. Our training budget is a big percentage of our expenditure. We have world class expenditure levels in our budget, for both sending people overseas and training locally.”
Above and beyond that, another key part of the corporation’s vision is that it takes real ownership of its work. Responsibility is a watchword at the BTCL.
Any issues that arise are their own problems to solve, with deadlines being respected and both internal and external customers being made aware that the company will always be on the case until a problem is solved. This segues neatly into another part of their vision, Delivery. The BTCL is an organisation that gets things done. They take action on their own initiative and use their vast reservoir of knowledge, experience and judgement to resolve all challenges within the bounds of reasonable risk and relevant governance.
Doing business with the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited is a simple matter, and even when dealing with complicated issues they make simplicity a priority, so that doing business with them is easy, and straightforward to understand.
Finally, the BTCL , as the foremost provider of telecommunications services in Botswana, is clear that it takes pride in everything it does, from who they work with to whom they work for, and they do all of this while having fun.
The Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited believes that a happy team makes for happy customers, and this attitude can be seen in
every facet of the business.
BTCL strategy is premised among others on offering Fixed and Mobile and Converged Products and Services, building a high performance and customer centric culture, innovation, rolling out the next generation network s; building strategic partnerships and overall supporting National ICT initiatives.
Taylor says BTCL will continue to implement service delivery improvement initiatives and seek opportunities to enhance the commercial competitiveness of the Company.
THE CHALLENGES AHEAD
It’s a good job the company has such a strong vision to guide it, as their task is no small one. As Taylor, explains, Botswana is a big company to provide telecommunications coverage for.
“Botswana is about the size of France with a population of 2 million and hostile environments outside the major conurbations,” he admits. “We’ve recently gone through a separation exercise where the backbone of the network was spun off into its own company, while we’re selling of stock to Botswana or other companies. Meanwhile we’re modernising our IT suite, while still keeping an eye on customers and day to day upgrades for obsolescence.”
The task is made more manageable by the fact that the company currency has a single goal it is working towards, one that will change not only the nature of the company, but will have ripples throughout the telecommunications industry in Botswana.
“We have started a journey towards a fixed, mobile and convergence vision, and we’re unswervingly focused on delivering that,” Taylor says. “This transformation is the biggest project we are focused on right now, and we believe it’s going to have a huge impact on the company and the market as a whole.”
