If you get a chance you should read his account of his experience dealing with Mr. Delivery – it sounds like it left a really bad taste in the mouth – excuse the pun.

Personally I am quickly getting to the point where I refuse to deal with callcentres – I want to be able to deal with real people with the authority and ability to answer my questions straight away. While call centres may be able to help businesses deal with large numbers of clients, maybe they would be better off focusing on better relationship building.

Post your comments below on your experiences dealing with the Mr. Delivery callcentre.

BCS has big plans. By 2012 it aims to be the largest converged telecommunications provider in Southern Africa, with high-capacity points of presence (PoPs) across the SADC countries, connecting them to its PoPs in South Africa and the UK. BCSgroup has an ECNS license with a national network and, through its partner IBS, has secured access to 20 STM-1 circuits (20×155Mbps) on the Seacom cable. BCS is one of the earliest adopters of long term contracts to secure low cost international bandwidth in the Southern African region.

BCS will offer smaller ISPs access to bandwidth at dramatically lower prices than seen before, from as little as R5500 per month per Mbps international circuit, representing an estimated 80% reduction in their costs from just two years ago.

The choice to colocate at Teraco’s Cape Town vendor neutral data centre is a crucial step in this growth strategy, and BCSgroup will be amongst the first tenants of the Johannesburg data centre when it comes on line in February 2010.

Willie Olivier, managing director of BCSgroup says, “Colocating within Teraco’s vendor neutral facilities was the obvious next step for us. Through our acquisition of circuits on the Seacom cable, BCS is in the position to rapidly grow our wholesale and large enterprise converged solutions business. Retaining BCS’ independence in terms of both the hardware we provide and the network operators we use has always been a critical part of our value offering. As the only genuinely neutral colocation facility in South Africa, Teraco is best placed for us to interconnect with other networks and carriers, from neighbouring African countries and the rest of the world. Their facility presents a perfect launch pad for our expansion.”

From the Teraco data centre facilities, BCS will offer competitively priced Internet bandwidth and private leased line circuits to ISPs and large enterprise customers within South Africa and beyond its borders. In addition, BCS will peer on NAPAfrica – the new neutral network access point that is located in the ‘meet me’ room in Teraco’s data centres – allowing the free exchange of Internet traffic between BCS customers and other service providers colocated at Teraco.

“The BCS expansion strategy has been one of both self provision and partnership, each option weighed up in terms of what makes the most economic sense and how we can provide the best possible value to our customers over the long term. Our partnership with Teraco means that choice means being able to pick from the best as they become available,” says Olivier.

“We are delighted to welcome BCS to join the growing list of carriers and network providers available in Teraco data centres,” says Lex van Wyk, managing director of Teraco. “BCS have found a compelling niche as a regional network and look set to deliver excellent value to some of our other customers.”

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 electrical resiliency 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.

About BCSGroup

With over 30 years experience, BCSgroup is well positioned to be the leading provider of converged technology solutions in Africa, offering a comprehensive range of next-generation services in partnership with top technology vendors. As an ECNS license holder, BCSgroup is able to provide services nationally, through its own office and network infrastructure, and through a number of partnerships. BCSgroup provides customers with a full communication service, including information distribution, access, unified communications, mobile solutions, voice data and content -switching routing and management, solution design, integration services and Telecommunication Expense Management (TEM) that is built on world-class products and technology.

www.teraco.co.za

This sector is a growing sector in South Africa and we are using this blog to discuss news and developments in the sector to help us best understand industry needs.

We look forward to interacting with various role players in the sector and exchanging news and views with industry professionals.

For further information on our corporate wellness offering for the callcentre environment please visit www.rival.co.za or mail sales@rival.co.za

Regards,

Marc Ashton