As South Africa’s infrastructure and capacity build-out for 2010 accelerates, tech innovator Tellumat is adding steadily to its already impeccable tech supply credentials.
The company’s standing in telecoms, defence and electronic manufacturing and supply continues to grow, with a formidable increase in its portfolio of products, services and capacity over the last few months.
Rasheed Hargey, Tellumat CEO, says in almost 10 years since inception, Tellumat has built extensively on its product and solution portfolio, completing development of nine key product families and building project, engineering, development, manufacturing and servicing skills in numbers. “Many of these fall squarely within the ballpark of the country’s 2010 needs.”
Enabling competitive telecoms
In a powerful endorsement of Tellumat’s telecoms and manufacturing abilities, its wireless division has been named the sole supplier of microwave links that will help power the national network of Neotel, South Africa’s fast-growing second fixed-line operator. Tellumat also boasts world-class WiMAX technologies providing cost and deployment effective broadband wireless solutions for customers. The company has also tendered for a fibre-optic network for the City of Cape Town, and has been short-listed for a wireless broadband network in the City of Johannesburg.
Aside from fibre and wireless, its customer premises equipment (CPE) skills encompass cordless and Wi-Fi phone systems, call centre platforms and countless enterprise networks, with 2 million ports sold in two decades.
The company has over the last few months signed supply deals with telecoms companies including Telkom, MWeb, Orion and Vox Telecom, for its ranges of enterprise telephony platform and small office communication systems, as well as end-points. All this, says Hargey, should serve as ample demonstration of Tellumat’s ability to assist in the communications network and CPE needs that the World Cup will engender.
Made in SA
Complementing its products and services push, Tellumat has recently beefed up its aggressively expanding, hitherto Cape-based electronic contract manufacturing capacity, with a 50% acquisition of the Gauteng-based PCB Assembly Facility from Denel, which facility now supplies Carl Zeiss Optronics. This came just months after its acquisition of Rhomco, a Cape-based outsourced manufacturer of high-end electronics, adding an impressive customer base, equipment capacity, skilled staff, excellent management and 20 years’ experience in contract manufacturing.
Tellumat can efficiently service diverse manufacturing needs, from prototyping once-off products for small design outfits to managing turnkey mass-production on very large runs. “Total throughput for just one customer currently exceeds 40 000 circuit boards per month, giving the SA market a cost-effective, quality, high-capacity alternative to cheap mass production in the Far East,” says Hargey.
Offering full turnkey manufacturing of radio frequency gear, microwave links, GSM payphones, PBXs, satellite equipment and medical products, as well as managing distribution logistics and after-sales support, Tellumat can assist ably in the manufacturing needs of stadia and networks (access control, security, microwave links and much more).
Tellumat has recently initiated a workshop platform for its customers and partners, to promote knowledge sharing in the hugely complex and highly competitive manufacturing space.
The best defence and a safe landing
Mirroring the Neotel triumph in its defence contracts, Tellumat has supplied microwave links to Armscor, to upgrade and expand the SANDF’s national command and control network. It has maintained the SA Air Force’s Umlindi air-defence radar system for 20 years, and recently won a maintenance deal for Airfield Radar Approach Systems.
Tellumat Defence’s ERIEYE airborne surveillance system, which it will supply via an exclusive local distribution arrangement with SAAB Microwave, further provides potential security solutions to the armed forces for 2010 and beyond.
As regards the massive influx of football crowds and their safety and security at the country’s airports, SIA Solutions, an aviation-focused 60-40 Tellumat-Harambe Solutions JV has won the following deals recently: automated weather observer systems (AWOS) for Lanseria Airport; instrument landing system (ILS) for Bhisho Airport; fibre-optic communications infrastructure technology to Meraka Institute, a CSIR initiative; and several fibre-optic communications installations, including Airports Company of SA (ACSA), connecting specialised equipment to air-traffic control systems.
Having won over the local market, SIA’s recent wins extend to two Botswana airports, signalling a breakthrough era for the company in which its capabilities are being recognised further afield.
And with extensive project and technology skills in the defence and aviation arenas, Tellumat has also concluded formal skills- and technology-sharing arrangements with leading firms in other emerging economies, including India and Saudi Arabia.
Empowered to the hilt
In support of SA’s drive for broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE), Tellumat has impressive empowerment credentials. It has secured a Level 4 BEE status, measured against the DTI’s Codes of Good Practice, qualifying its customers for 100% BEE procurement recognition. The Codes define a Level 4 company as a ‘Superior Contributor to BEE’. Tellumat’s black ownership is 32% (the Codes require 25% + 1 by 2012), officially classing it as a black-empowered company.
Tellumat includes up to 50% local content (components) in its assemblies, whereas it says all locally-assembled ICT content from its global brand competitors is imported. The company’s decades-long corporate social investment initiatives have targeted education in the Khanyagula Science sponsorship, SAAF Rugby Week and other similar ventures.
Hargey urges other industry firms to follow suit in becoming truly empowered and socially conscious: “When more companies attain a rating as a result, more customers will be able to rate themselves with certainty. The end result will be the chain reaction that everyone wants, where economic power will reach the furthest reaches of the second economy.”
Hargey says Tellumat believes that where a local, BBBEE-compliant company produces world-class innovation, it should enjoy preference above comparable overseas offerings. “Where a BBBEE-compliant SA company can deliver innovative world-class solutions, that should be a very strong reason to seal the deal.”
For more information contact Rasheed Hargey, Tellumat, +27 (0)21 710 2911, [email protected], www.tellumat.com
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