The collaboration stems from an initial business relationship that was established between the two companies in 2015 whereby AnD approached CTEL to assist with the virtualisation of its cloud communication products, and white labelled its cloud services from Connection Telecom’s multi-tenanted cloud infrastructure.
The existing owners and executive, Kelvin Brown and Jill Thompson, retain their management responsibilities, and no changes in the current employment structure of AnD is expected.
After a successful cloud migration for AnD, and with the growing demand of local businesses requiring tailored cloud services, CTEL saw a prime opportunity to expand its operations countrywide to better service all its customers. As part of its regional growth strategy, CTEL had already acquired Johannesburg-based cloud service provider Fat Budgie in 2013 and was now looking to secure a stronger presence in the KwaZulu-Natal market.
Having exceeded service expectations for thirty years, Durban-born AnD was the most obvious and suitable choice for CTEL’s next partnership to enhance its service and support capabilities in the province.
Says David Meintjes, managing director at Connection Telecom, “Through this acquisition, existing and potential customers of both CTEL, and AnD, will benefit from upgrading the Durban point of presence to a full node on the core network of Connection Telecom, completing the multi-gigabit network between Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town; AnD accessing the national presence of install and maintenance capacity in 50 points in the country to fulfil customer requirements elsewhere in South Africa; having a wider selection of access networks to choose from (which will now include Seacom, Liquid, Openserve, Mitsol, Comsol, Vodacom, Metro Fibre Networks, Dark Fibre Networks, Internet Solutions) at the same price as their retail prices including separate VLAN that supports high-quality voice; improved access to our professional services and core team, and a more direct access to a fuller range of cloud services offered from AWS, Google and IBM BlueMix services.”
He adds, “It will allow wider access to additional cloud services for one, and will enable KZN-based businesses with offices throughout South Africa to leverage off of our national footprint of service.”
Kelvin Brown, technical director at Analog and Digital Communications, concurs, saying, “This is a fantastic opportunity for our loyal clients to benefit from these enhancements to our portfolio. What’s more is that it will ensure we remain the leading-edge provider of quality voice and data services well into the future.”
