Pan-African telecoms enabler Seacom, via its Business division, plans to drive up to 80% of its revenue through its channel partners and is linking its new age telco strategy with the construction of an enhanced channel program.

According to the company a new age telco is one with the appropriate systems and infrastructure in place to allow customers to truly converge solutions on a self-management and provisioning basis.

The strategy is therefore to develop an automated, self-service, self-managed and self-provisioned channel program – one in which data, security, VoIP and VAS are provisioned on one link, paid for each month, and consumed as a service.

"The new-age telco remains lead and mean and uses systems, not people to scale and automate and drive a valuable customer experience," says Grant Parker, head of Seacom Business.

More businesses in Africa are looking to invest in fibre internet access broadband and leverage the connectivity, and Parker says a key component of the Seacom Business channel engagement strategy to adapt the channel to suit local requirements of regions.

"For example, Kenya prefers the agent model, whereby Seacom's partner owns the relationship with the-end user, but we own the billing, contractual and support component. This is partly due to the financial, regulatory and legal requirements," he explains.

However, there is a large commoditisation of ITaaS, says Parker – and this is regardless of currencies or markets. "Connectivity is the enabler to this, as well as the proximity of the services being accessed."

Kevin South, Seacom Business Channel Manager, adds, "Our strategy of diversifying our business from bringing low-cost data transmission infrastructure to other service providers in Africa towards offering a full portfolio of services to the business market is paying off. We're seeing great adoption of our fibre connectivity as well as of our private and outsourced network solutions."

The company plans to ramp up the roll out of solutions in Kenya, and to start looking at growth opportunities in Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania. "These markets are ready for the sort of disruption we can bring," says Parker.