29 March 2007
The advent of Broadband products on the South African Internet Service Provider (ISP) market a few years ago has resulted in a re-think from all ISPs with regard to service offerings to the market at large. As a result of this Internet Solutions (IS) launched the IS Broadband Business unit 12 months ago. The main objective of the business unit is to provide quality broadband services coupled with value-added services to the SMME market.
IS, traditionally seen as a purely corporate service provider, now has the SMME sector firmly in its sights. Broadband offerings, now they are more affordable, allow SMMEs to purchase high speed connectivity instead of having to make do with outdated, un-reliable and slow dial-up connectivity. The business benefits are enormous. SMMEs who used to pay massive amounts for diginet connectivity in order to receive a reliable service, and those who had to suffer along though dial-up connectivity due it being the only affordable option, are now coming together as a significant market sector.
Uncapped ADSL with static IP addresses, introduced by IS through its Business ADSL offering, has seen enthusiastic acceptance. Since its launch in April 2005 more than 6000 SMMEs have opted for this solution. The solution is one of a kind in the South African broadband market as it allows the subscriber to carry out essential business requirements through their connectivity medium without the threat of a cap hanging over them and eliminates dynamic IP addressing. This coupled with the ADSL Secure option gives the subscriber a fully fledged business tool with security features that preclude the normal threats associated with the Internet. Over the last few months IS has received an average 400 new Business ADSL orders per month. The successful introduction of these specially designed products has increased IS’ total number of corporate/SMME users (from around 2000 18 months ago) by 400% in this period.
IS’ capped ADSL offerings are also showing substantial growth – in the region of 900 new users per month bringing the total to 23,000 users. This end of the market is extremely competitive. However, the IS capped product is differentiated by way of a “soft cap” on their capped services.
An ongoing demand for broadband connectivity as well as new innovations are expected to produce continued and substantial growth in the SMME space as we head into 2007. For example, smaller corporates and SMMEs who in the past have been unable to afford Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity to their smaller branches, now have the option of using the IS Broadband VPN service to allow secure, high speed and reliable inter-branch connectivity.
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