The past, present and future of Openserve, with CEO Althon Beukes

Loading player...
Openserve, South Africa’s biggest telecommunications infrastructure provider, has been through enormous changes in the nine years since it became a separate brand and a subsidiary of the Telkom Group in 2015.
In the latest podcast in a five-part series of interviews with Openserve executives, the company’s CEO, Althon Beukes, tells TechCentral’s TCS+ about these changes and what they have meant for the company and the broader market, including its internet service provider partners.
Beukes provides an overview of these changes, including the recent spinoff of Openserve into a separate subsidiary within Telkom.
In the interview, Beukes reflects on:
• The changing dynamics of the telecoms infrastructure market in South Africa;
• Why there’s been a slowdown in the roll-out of fibre-optic networks;
• How Openserve is performing considering the broader market context;
• How load shedding and load reduction have impacted Openserve, and the investments it has made to overcome the challenge;
• The shift away from legacy copper technologies and the big growth in next-generation services, and what’s driving that demand;
• The potential for industry consolidation – and why much depends on the outcome of the ongoing Competition Tribunal investigation into Vodacom’s acquisition of up to a 40% stake in Vumatel parent company Maziv;
• What Openserve would like to see flowing from the Competition Tribunal process; and
• Openserve’s future plans, including where it’s headed in the coming years.
Do not miss a fascinating discussion – and the rest of the interviews in the series.
2 Sep 2024 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

Specops' Darren James on continuous trust in an AI world

Specops Software’s Darren James explains why identity checks alone no longer stop determined attackers. Traditional approaches to access security no longer hold up in hybrid, cloud-first environments – and AI is widening the gap. In this episode, host Kevin Smith speaks to Darren James, senior product manager at Specops Software,…
7 Aug 45 min

How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could. In the age of AI, that logic is starting to…
6 Aug 19 min

Why South African workers must become supervisors of digital labour

ADG’s Cliff de Wit on why the next management challenge is overseeing teams of autonomous software agents. Not long ago, organisations were experimenting with generative AI to draft e-mails, summarise documents and answer questions. Today agentic AI is changing what the technology is for. In a conversation on TechCentral’s TCS+…
31 Jul 43 min

TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

For small and medium enterprises, technology must do one thing above all else: get out of the way. Unlike large corporations with dedicated IT departments, SMEs run lean – and every hour spent wrestling with systems is an hour not spent on the business itself. In this episode of TechCentral’s…
30 Jul 37 min

A smarter approach to cloud for South African businesses

South African businesses are spending millions on cloud – and many have very little to show for it. That is the uncomfortable starting point for this episode of TCS+, in which Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to Joel Chacko, executive head of department for cloud services at Vodacom Business, and Jonathan Oaker,…
28 Jul 21 min