Pan-African telecoms enabler SEACOM has extended corporate market offering to the East African region by providing enhanced broadband connectivity and cloud services directly to corporates, under its SEACOM Business initiative.
Since the launch of a similar product offering a year ago in South Africa, the division in East Africa has already signed up almost 50 business customers, adding more each month. It has also recently appointed several corporate partners to support its drive into the SME market, and expects to speed up its total corporate customer acquisitions going forward.
“We have only had positive feedback from our South African clients after we launched the service there in 2015 and as a result have been signing up a growing number of corporate customers. This experience helps us showcase our product portfolio customer satisfaction to the East African market,” said SEACOM CEO Byron Clatterbuck.
Initially focused on bringing low-cost data transmission infrastructure to other service providers in Africa, SEACOM intends to boost uptake through key partnerships with local and regional fibre providers.
“We have already built out 8 metro points of presence around Nairobi, and this gives us a solid base from which to extend further with our partners. By having our own metro PoPs, we can better manage service quality and network scalability to our growing customer base,” said Clatterbuck.
According to the firm’s sales lead Patrick Ndegwa, the new product offerings includes Fibre Internet Access with options ranging from 25Mbps up to 1Gbps. “We believe the uptake will be tremendous as customers get a taste of our service offering, which we have already seen in South Africa,” says Ndegwa.
SEACOM launched the first broadband submarine cable system along the East African coastline in 2009 linking South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique with major Internet connection hubs in Europe and Asia.
Today, it offers a redundant connectivity ring around Africa’s east and west coasts, optimal traffic routing through multiple tier-1 upstream partners in Europe and Asia. It also offers direct connectivity to African routes, and content, delivering services over last-mile access through leading connectivity partnerships in various regions – last-mile fibre is a major focus as it seeks to capture the corporate market.
