Seacom will soon add voice to its data services, as it enters into a strategic partnership with end-to-end telecommunications and networking solutions provider Saicom Voice Services.
The partnership will allow Seacom to provide voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and cloud PBX services over a white-label platform to corporate and SME customers.
“We are looking to build long-term relationships with trusted partners and the strength of our partnerships have been key to the success of our business right from the beginning, says Greg de Chasteauneuf, chief technology officer at Saicom Voice Services.
“Our strategy is to build our channel platform in order for resellers to partner with us and in turn extend their service offering to their customers with voice solutions.”
Through the partnership, Seacom will offer voice services to its growing customer base, in addition to its existing high-speed internet access and cloud services.
“We were looking for a voice partner that uses reliable and high-quality infrastructure, and Saicom Voice Services’ Broadsoft carrier-grade platform gave us the quality assurance that we needed,” says Grant Parker, head of Seacom Business. “Having a full-fledged IP telephony solution completes our service offerings to customers in terms of data and voice.”
De Chasteauneuf adds: “Our platform allows Seacom to operate autonomously and to support its clients on an end-to-end basis without having to own the infrastructure.
“The confirmation of the strength of our channel platform is in how quickly Seacom could sell and deliver services to their customers. They were able to deploy their VoIP and cloud PBX offering within a couple of months as opposed to a couple of years.”
Parker adds that the Saicom Voice Services’ Cloud PBX portal will be attractive for customers. “The premise of our offering to our business customers is that they need to have an effortless experience when doing business with us and the Cloud PBX portal is easy to interact with, which was another criteria we had when we evaluated potential voice partners.
“We want to make sure that we have an outside-in approach, meaning that we look at what customers want, how they want to interact with us, and then we make it easy for them to do business with us.”
With the ability of fibre to scale bandwidth, Seacom is well positioned to offer converged services that enable both data and voice, and other value-added services, on one medium.
“We own the undersea fibre cable system and supply all Tier 1 internet service providers (ISPs) in South Africa as well as all Tier 1 ISPs in countries where our cable system lands, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and now also Uganda,” says Parker. “We may look at extending these new services into these markets in the near future.”
