19 September 2013

The six worthy finalists of this year’s Namibian Business Woman of the Year competition were announced on Wednesday, 18 September.

Speaking at the occasion, managing director of Telecom Namibia Frans Ndoroma congratulated the finalists for being nominated and accepting their nomination.

The finalists are Cynthia Martin Haihambo, MD of Capernaum Employee Assistance programme; Jaime Smith, owner of SICS Polygraph; Dorkas Kapembe-Haiduwa, Secretary General of the Namibian Red Cross Society; Jantje Daun, Chief Financial officer of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation; Ericah Shafudah, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance; and Natasha Beyeveld, Managing Director of Namedia.

According to the organizer Desire London-Muller, 20 individuals were nominated and only the six met the requirements and criteria, reaching the final stages of adjudication.

Nominations were made in the categories Business owner Award, Private and Corporate Sector Award, Community and Government Award and Young Businesswoman of the Year Award.

One of the winners of the first three categories will be 16^th recipient of the coveted Namibian BusinessACBRWoman of the Year Award at a function to be held at Safari Hotel in Windhoek on 11 October 2013.

The award was started 16 years ago to celebrate and acknowledge the success of women in business and is open to women in both the private and public sector who have shown exceptional growth and success in their businesses and positions of leadership.

“Namibia is full of extraordinary women who endlessly commit not only to their work, but to their communities as well. We are inspired by each nominee and wish them every success. These successful nominees become role models to other women wishing to launch their own business,” said Ndoroma.

He said Namibia can only prosper if every citizen of the country contributes towards the alleviation of poverty by creating opportunities for others through empowerment and employment creation. “This is what these awards seek to recognise,” he added.

Telecom Namibia this year has contributed over N$200,000 towards the businesswomen projects being administered by the Economist Businesswomen Club.

Castle Brewing Namibia is a co-sponsor of the Namibian Business Woman of the Year Awards.

20 September 2013

The awards ceremony for the Best Idea Competition organised as part of the Northern Businesswomen Conference was held at the Telecom Namibia head office in Windhoek on Thursday.

The competition is jointly sponsored by Telecom Namibia and Standard bank in an effort to contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Namibia by helping the next generation of businesswomen create and lead their successful business ventures.

During the 14^th Northern Businesswomen Conference held in Ongwediva on 8 August which was also sponsored by the two companies, the Namibia Business Innovation Centre (NBIC) invited conference participants to enter their business ideas as part of the competition.

Namibian Businesswomen Projects organiser, Desere Lundon- Muller, noted the conference was a resounding success having been attended by over 100 delegates.

“The Namibian Business Innovation Centre (NBIC) did a presentation on innovation and the new business idea generation to capture quality and sustainable ideas. It also conducted an evaluation on the final business ideas presented by the five participants,” she said.

The NBIC, after evaluating the business ideas, announced winners at the ceremony on 19 September. The idea Elundu-Oushake (Auction Kraal) developed by four women won, receiving prizes worth N$12 500 from Telecom Namibia and N$5 000 from Standard Bank as start-up funds.

The winners, Diina Shimweefeni, Antonia Antonia, Peneyambeko Ndakolo and Lidia Shadjuka will be assisted by the NBIC with a formal business plan that can be presented to a financial institution for funding.

Telecom Namibia corporate communication and public relations senior manager, Oiva Angula said business idea competitions work as a learning process for aspiring entrepreneurs: “The business idea competition allows students to learn the process of innovation. While business is all about risk, the competition also teaches aspiring businesswomen how to minimise risks in their projects and how to validate their ideas."

25 October 2013

Telecom Namibia has joined forces with German Internet provider Deutscher Commercial Internet Exchange (De-CIX) and New Telco SA, a Jasco Group company, to establish international access points in South Africa and Namibia to the German Internet exchange (DE-CIX). This comes on the back of a recent move by Telecom Namibia in partnership with New Telco SA to establish Points of Presence (PoPs) in South African and European communication hubs last year. The access points will connect to the De-CIX Apollon platform, the world’s largest Internet Exchange, providing direct access for Namibia and South Africa to more than 550 networks connected to the De-CIX node. Jasco will provide the physical platform to enable this interconnection. The establishment of this Internet Exchange is expected to deliver multiple benefits to customers of Telecom Namibia and to the economy of the region as a whole.

`We are very excited about the partnership with New Telco SA which enabled Telecom Namibia to interconnect its PoPs to the world’s largest internet exchange, the DE-CIX. This interconnection will provide us with the ability to provide a speedy, reliable and robust connectivity to European digital ecosystem and beyond. It also dramatically improved routing efficiency and the quality of the Internet experience for end-users,` says Isak Ouseb, Senior Manager: Product Management at Telecom Namibia.

`Our partnership with New Telco SA is a pioneering step in connecting Africa to the world, removing the reliance on third parties to connect internationally and driving down the cost of communications for the continent. This is just the first step in revolutionising telecommunications in Namibia. Further phases, such as additional PoPs and the extension of our national infrastructure will enable us to further extend these services,` Ouseb added.

The establishment of these access points will create an optimal enabling environment for exchanging local, regional and international Internet traffic, facilitating Namibia’s vision of becoming the ICT hub in the West African region. It will also allow for more efficient use of available infrastructure and capabilities, and will support the building of centralised infrastructure for content localisation. Other benefits include substantial cost savings for network operators through a reduction in long-haul traffic costs, better resiliency and security of network infrastructure, massive reduction in latency and a reduced risk of outages, resulting in improved customer experience in Namibia and the region.

`In the past, traffic to and from Namibia either could not connect, or had to be routed via multiple different countries, depending on how service providers were connected to each other. With the establishment of the IXP, traffic is now under the direct control of Telecom Namibia, and can be sent directly over their own traffic routes to the De-CIX aggregation point, and from there to all of the European service providers connected to the hub. This lowers the cost of routing, with a knock-on effect to customers, and also improved speed and reliability. Given the close historical links with Namibia and Germany, having a direct connection makes sense from an economical point of view. The IXP will provide a direct interconnect between businesses in Germany and their customers or branches in Namibia, improving business,` says Eckart Zollner, Head of Business Development, Jasco ICT Solutions.

`Telecom Namibia is a truly unique network on the platform, the first African network from the West Coast to benefit from the cutting edge Apollon interconnection solution. Telecom Namibia will benefit from first mover advantage and is poised to take over technical, commercial and marketing leadership in the region as a result,` says Andreas Sturm, De-CIX Management, GmbH.

The IXP facility will not only function as an Internet Exchange switch, but will also enable data centre services to be offered, which will open up new avenues of business for both Telecom Namibia and other operators in the country.

The three-party agreement between New Telco SA, Telecom Namibia and De-CIX was signed in August 2013 and the interconnect has now been fully implemented effective from the beginning of September, enabling Telecom Namibia to begin rolling out new services and solutions to its customers.