What have been the highlights and key developments for your company in the region in the past year?
The main highlight in the region is the merger of our voice, data and media business to create a single service provider organisation for our customers. We have also renewed our focus on our data business in the region and are seeing some very good traction here.
What are the challenges of operating in the Eastern European market and how are you looking to tackle those challenges?
While our voice and mobile business in the region is quite healthy, our data business has been relatively small in comparison to our presence in other region of the world. We have addressed this by creating a new organisational structure under my management that will focus on growing new business.
We have also launched a Central & Eastern Europe network roll-out plan where we are developing new PoPs. A PoP in Vienna has already been development while Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia should be launched before the end of the year.
What are your strategic priorities as well as expansion plans for the region in 2017?
Growing our overall business in the region through partnerships and building new revenue streams via consumer and enterprise enablement, capital and operational efficiencies and platform availability are a few of the key strategic priorities for this year and into 2017.
What major trends do you see occurring in the Eastern European market this year and how do you plan to capitalise on those?
We are seeing a trend toward more cloud-based services as well as security services.
We still see a very good potential for us in this region as we have a broad solution portfolio including IP services, capacity services, DDoS solutions and cloud access services (IZO) as well as UCC services for international enterprises. These services will enable us to facilitate the expansion of multinational enterprises in Eastern Europe into new – developed and emerging – markets.
A key differentiator for us is our ownership of the world’s largest wholly-owned submarine fibre network with more than 500,000 kilometres of subsea fibre. These combined with our 8,000+ employees on all continents will enable us to capitalise on these trends.
What does your organisation hope to achieve by attending Capacity Eastern Europe 2016?
We will be having meetings with key customers and we will also have discussions on potential partnerships within the region. One of our key objectives is to let the region know that we are in the data business for the long-term and offer services in this line of business that are of the same high quality as our voice solutions.