Bloomberg reported over the weekend that the South African parastatal telecoms company Telkom has held talks with several international media companies, including Netflix, Comcast and Naspers. Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko has been quoted as saying that these talks were part of the company’s move towards building a video-on-demand (VOD) service on its fixed-line broadband infrastructure.
No timeline has been given for these talks and it is not known whether they are still ongoing or what their outcomes were.
Telkom’s talk of launching VOD services is nothing new. It has been promising to launch such services for a number of years. The company has splashed out on upgrades of its network with new fibre installations and its provision of VDSL (Very high bit rate digital subscriber line) services via its existing copper cable network.
Paradoxically, in light of these infrastructure expansions, Maseko also said in the Bloomberg interview that he planned to lay off up to a thousand managers and cut Telkom’s workforce by about a third. A few days after the interview, Business Day reported that Maseko had moved to calm fears after this announcement. He has still confirmed, however, that staff numbers will have to be reduced in order to cut costs.
