Newbie named as Neotel

South Africa’s second national operator has been officially unveiled under the brand Neotel. At its launch ceremony yesterday, managing director Ajay Pandey said the firm would be introducing selected corporate services immediately, with residential services available by March next year. The firm says it has access to 10,000km of fibre-optic backbone network and will augment this with both fixed and wireless end-user connections. Neotel plans an investment of ZAR11 billion (USD1.5 billion) over the next ten years according to local news portal MyBroadband.