Teraco Brings the South Africa Opportunity to UK Hi-Tech Business Leaders

Online, October 21, 2009 (Newswire.com) - London, UK - Teraco Data Environments, the first vendor and carrier neutral data centre in South Africa, today hosted a high profile event for senior UK executives operating in the telecommunications and IT business at the exclusive Home House Club at Portman Square in London. The key focus of the event was to highlight the radical changes in South Africa's telecoms landscape over the last year, and how these have created new opportunities for global companies

The event featured presentations from Teraco, Seacom and T-Systems. Over 60 companies, including 15 global carriers and numerous global multinationals and ICT companies attended.

The emergence of choice of carrier in South Africa and rollout of high-speed fibre links within the country and new undersea cables are together making the country an increasingly attractive place for businesses to invest or to place operating units.

Presentations discussed the proliferation of network players since the High Court ruling last year, which allowed all electronic communications network service (ECNS) licensees, of which there are about 500, to build networks. To date, it is believed that around 12 companies are investing in network build out. This is leading to a decrease in bandwidth prices over the last seven years: from as much as $30,000 per megabytes per second (Mbps) per month for international connectivity in 2003 to $600 per Mbps per month today. Consensus was that this would fall lower in coming years.

"This event affirmed European interest in the South African economy and ICT industry," says Tim Parsonson, group chief executive of Teraco.

"We hosted this event to bring together UK-based executives that are looking for new options for their own growth with new partners that can provide better, more cost effective services. The market is changing fast and companies need to keep options open. As the only neutral colocation provider in SA, Teraco looks forward to continue growing its footprint in the data centre space as international businesses realise the benefits of colocating their data centres in South Africa's competitive new telecoms space," concludes Parsonson.

About Teraco Data Environments

Founded in 2007, Teraco is South Africa's first provider of vendor neutral data centres, with an absolute focus on building and operating its data centre facilities in Johannesburg and Cape Town to global best practice. Unrestricted choice of network and service provider allows customers to manage traffic to get better value or performance, and creates an open market for partnerships between customers, networks and service providers. Teraco data centres give customers a technically superior, physically more secure and lower cost environment for their information systems. Strictly enforced access control, uncompromised security, guaranteed power, advanced fire protection, efficient cooling and N+1 redundancy throughout ensures hardware availability. As business needs change, resources can be rapidly and flexibly scaled. Leading international investors and Treacle Private Equity, a black owned South African private equity group, back Teraco. The company is a Level 4 contributor (DTI Codes). For more information please visit www.teraco.co.za.

Press Contacts

•Lex van Wyk - Managing Director, Teraco, Mobile: +27 83 799 2159, [email protected]
•Elzaan Rohde - Account Director, Sentient Communications, Tel: +27 21 422 4275, [email protected]