Overview of BCSgroup

BCSgroup is a private telecommunications investment holding company that has positioned itself to become one of South Africa's and SADC's leading converged service providers by securing strategic assets and projects, telecom licences, access rights, world-class voice platforms, and technology partnerships that will allow the Group to take advantage of the opportunities identified above.

BCSgroup began by acquiring an established ISP in July 2008 and set about rebuilding its current infrastructure and extending the product range and services both within South Africa and into SADC. It acquired both I-ECS and I-ECNS licences and through a strategic partnership became one of a small group of preferred suppliers of international bandwidth on the SEACOM cable. It then secured a partnership with Ericsson to manage and operate Africa's first digital city in Johannesburg. BCSgroup then secured a strategic voice partner to complement its existing data and infrastructure business and enable a true converged product offering. During this process, BCSgroup assembled a formidable and experienced team of experts and technical staff.

To realize the potential of a complete regional strategy, BCSgroup also applied for and is on track to acquire regional and national licences within the SADC region. The interdependent skills, knowledge, operational support, human and technical resources will be transferred into the SADC development over time to unlock the potential contained within the contracts and rights.

The group is now enabled with a suite of attractive short- and long-term opportunities, and together with its technology and funding partners, is looking for the next level of investment from a strategic equity partner, that shares a common telecommunications vision.

Key strengths

BCSgroup's value proposition lies in its strategic access to:

Licences and Infrastructure
- I-ECN and I-ECNS licences allows BCSgroup the capability of building its own infrastructure networks, and apply for spectrum licences,
- A fully-fledged Network Operations Centres (NOC) that allows management of its own infrastructure,
- Application hosting facilities, which allows the Group to offer full-service hosted management services,
- A full-service telecommunications concession licence for the Mozambique Ponta Techobanine Deep Water Digital City Port.

Access
An IRU on 900km of the City of Johannesburg's fibre network,
- Metro ethernet capabilities through its own fibre network,
- Wholesale international access to SEACOM, SAT-3 and WACS,
- Full redundancy on its local and international capacity through Africa-Inx., and
- Wireless network capabilities

Partnerships
- Civils and infrastructure: Ericsson SA
- International Access: SEACOM, Telehouse, KDDI
- Local access: Africa-Inx, Neotel
- Networking: Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft
- Carrier-grade hardware: Alcatel-Lucent

Skills
- Infrastructure roll-out capabilities on GSM, satellite and broadband networks,
- Customer relationship management
- Data engineering and solution-crafting capabilities,