Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) is rethinking its data centre. What started as a way to run its own systems is now making money because of new laws and more need to store data locally. Acting CEO Boitumelo Paya said the data centre brought in about P20 million for shareholders.
If you own shares, data protection should be good news because BTC is using it to help protect your income in a tough market.
Why build a data centre in the first place?
- BTC built its data centre mainly for its use.
“At the time, we said the data center was purely for BTC utilization,” explained Boitumelo Paya, the acting CEO of the company said when speaking to investors and analysts. But the company saw a bigger chance: let other businesses use it.
We are now saying we are monetizing it. And we’ve seen the business double.
This means BTC is now getting paid by other companies to store their data, instead of just using the centre for itself.
A New Law Changes the Game
Botswana’s Data Protection Act says any data about people in Botswana must stay in Botswana. This means even big foreign companies need a place in Botswana to keep their data. BTC’s data centre was ready just in time.
The Data Protection Act came in for us ready, because we are helping with compliance with data localization.
Paya said.
Cloud Services As a Shield
BTC makes most of its money from selling internet, data, and phone lines to organizations, which include the government, private companies, and businesses. But many other competitors now offer those same services, sometimes cheaper.
“We are using cloud as a defense strategy. On the other side of connectivity (data, internet and fixed voice), it is quite competitive,” the acting CEO said.
But when we bundle ours with cloud, we think we can then defend ourselves, particularly in the enterprises.” In other words, Paya means that BTC adds cloud services to other services to offer what competitors don’t have.
The company hopes that by combining its cloud services with its internet and phone packages, customers will stay loyal while it attracts more.
When we did the brand survey, people were saying, I’m happy to stay with you, but I’m not sure about what to give me as an experience.
Paya said.
Through this extra, BTC is trying to protect its customer base from being taken away by competitors.
Focus on big customers
BTC’s strongest customers are businesses, the government, councils, and big companies. These customers make up about two-thirds of BTC’s income. These customers bring steady money, even though there is competition, said Paya. She noted that fixed voice lines (landline phones) are still doing well, but BTC is watching for problems.
“But they still meet our expectations,” Paya said.
BTC said it knows the risk is that revenue from fixed voice lines is going down, because more people are switching to data communications instead of landlines. The company said it tailored its services to fit different groups better. For example, in business customers, it has small and medium companies, unions, and many others. Each group wants different things. BTC focuses more on business customers, because Paya said they need to find new ways to keep earning from them.
Paya believes that business customers are very important because they provide steady and growing income that helps protect the company.
As BTC, we probably need to drive the enterprise business very hard despite the competition, but we also need to defend ourselves in digital service integration.
