openserve technician

 openserve technician

Telkom’s business unit Openserve will be the hardest hit by the job cuts the telecommunications company announced earlier this year.

So said Telkom spokesperson Noma Faku, in an interview with ITWeb last week to discuss Openserve’s business strategy.

Openserve is the wholesale business unit of Telkom, and provides wholesale products and services to other licensed telecommunications service providers through an open access network.

According to Faku, Openserve’s network modernisation from copper to fibre means many technicians will no longer be needed at the company, as fibre has fewer faults in comparison to the legacy copper network.

Openserve will see leadership changes at the end of this month, with long-serving CEO Alphonzo Samuels leaving the company.

Samuels will be replaced by Althon Beukes, Telkom’s group chief information officer.

Voice woesIn January, the financially-constrained Telkom announced 3 000 jobs will be cut at the company. This is not the first time it will reduce staff numbers, as it has been offering voluntary retrenchment packages since 2015 in a bid to reduce its wage bill.

Telkom has been facing challenges with declining revenues in fixed voice and fixed data services over the years.

Hurt by reduced voice revenues, Openserve prioritised modernising its network.

Earlier this month, Telkom said job cuts will cost the company a whopping R1.5 billion. After commencing phase one of a two-phase restructuring process, the operator said the restructuring process followed the technological shift to fibre, LTE/LTE-A as new sources of revenue, notwithstanding lower margins.

Telkom is also selling off more of its properties, saying the proceeds will be used to modernise the company’s network.

In regards to the job cuts, Faku said: “The number that we were consulting on was around 3 000. We opened voluntary packages and the people who volunteered going through the retrenchments discussions was in the vicinity of 2 300 and the bulk of them came from Openserve.

“This is because if we just look at the fault rate, for instance, between a copper network and a fibre network – it is significantly lower on the fibre network than the copper network.

“So we will not need as many technicians to service the network. So the bulk of the number of those we are consulting with are from Openserve, as well as Yellow Pages and the consumer business.”

Faku noted Telkom has invested very heavily in its network. “Looking back, our network was largely copper-based and part of the investment was the migration to fibre. The idea was that with copper, we had a quite huge fault rate and that fibre was a new and emerging technology.”