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?
Like many service providers, we are seeing margin erosion and more products being substituted by ones that do not always meet the market and the customers need for quality and reach.
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 new partnerships and strengthening our data business are the main key priorities for this year. We will then assess these and look at expansion plans for 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. We connect service providers to the strategies, solutions, applications, tolls and platforms that will drive their future growth.
Two key differentiators for us are our ownership of the world’s largest wholly-owned submarine fibre network with more than 500,000 kilometres of subsea fibre and the fact that we carry 25% of the world’s internet routes on our network. 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. We want partners to know that we can help them complete their services reach and portfolio to increase their wallet share and fulfil new business opportunities in the enterprise market. 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. We are a true global partner for Eastern Europe.
