BTC chief executive officer, Vincent Seretse told Mmegi that due to the liberalisation of the market and the coming into being of cellular phone companies in 1998, BTC has taken knocks because of the erosion of their customer base.
“This was a wake up call for BTC,” he said, adding that its impact coupled with the problems associated with the new billing system at the time, resulted in the drop in revenue.
“The mobile industry has indeed taken our customers and we have felt the jolt,” he said.
He however added that BTC is now in the process of rolling out a plan to ensure a clear fibre optic network infrastructure to cover the whole country.
“By 2006 we should be able to compete with anybody in the industry,” he said.
He explained that the Irish Consultants who were brought here to steer the cooperation’s fortunes have put up new processes and systems.
“We are no longer ‘fire-fighting’ but there is still a lot to be done,” he noted.
The BTC CEO noted that the challenge now is on modernising their infrastructure and added that they have the resources and the capacity to accomplish that.
He said BTC has a dedicated team to deal with rehabilitation of infrastructure and for the support areas, where there are many faults.
Seretse said BTC has secured a P300 million loan from government to support the expansion and rehabilitation of the infrastructure as well as the expansion of the network.
In terms of projects, he said BTC has already completed the fibre link between the southern and eastern corridor (between Gaborone and Francistown) and are looking to complete the other linkages to Lobatse, Kanye, Mamuno, Gantsi and Orapa.
“Once these are complete the whole country will be using a fibre network,” he said.
He added that they have also completed their digital link with Zimbabwe and are only awaiting a connection from the Zimbabwe side.
He said the completion of these P200 million projects would result in an efficient and reliable network because the fibre network compared to the old top-end system has infinite capacity thus cutting out on the problem of congested lines.
“Once that is complete together with others such as the Intelligence Network (IN) we should be able to comfortably say that we are in the big league and we have the infrastructure to compete with anyone in the world,” he said.
He said their vision is to make BTC the number one employer and a brand that is responsive to customer needs.
“We want returns that are sustainable and would be with us for many years to come,” he added.
Another product to be introduced to cater for the country’s sparce, low density populations in some parts and the difficult terrain is the V-set, which will allow them to reach such areas.
Seretse said the system would benefit remote areas, farmers and the hospitality industry.
BTC is also expanding its bandwidth and the Internet, which will now be hosted by British Telecom instead of having its traffic go through South Africa first, which will allow for value added services such as video conferencing.
He said BTC is also preparing for the challenge that comes with liberalising the telecommunications industry and Seretse’s belief is that, by then, they would be poised to compete because they would have modernised their infrastructure and delighted customers with their services.
“That’s a major challenge and that is why we have to hit the ground running for that eventuality,” he said.
He also noted that the advent of the Internet and text messages has also caused a decline in revenue because “half the time you use text messages when you should have been calling”.
He said their plan to turn the tide is to look at data as a growth area to compensate for the decline in voice traffic.
Similarly he said because BTC is a parastatal it could be privatised hence they are also preparing for such a possibility.
Seretse said unprofitable BTC projects such as the coin operated machines, which are littered around the country, even in areas where they are not economically viable would be stopped.
“We will desist from working with coin boxes that are not making money for us. They should be removed and only retained in areas where there is a high concentration of people,” he said.
Although acknowledging that this may not be a popular move, he said BTC would only do things that make business sense.
He said that in the past it was possible to put coin boxes at places such as the kgotla because that was free money from government.
“Those days are gone,” he concluded.
