Neotel signs contracts worth $205 mln

Neotel [NEO.UL], South Africa's No.2 fixed-line operator, has signed up almost half of the country's top 350 corporate clients in contracts worth about 1.5 billion rand ($205.1 million), its chief said on Friday.

Neotel, controlled by India's Tata group, was launched in 2006. It started selling corporate services last year and retail services in May, aiming to muscle into a market dominated for years by state-controlled fixed-line operator Telkom.

Neotel competes for corporate clients with Telkom (TKGJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research), Internet Solutions -- a unit of Dimension Data (DDTJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research) -- and Verizon South Africa, which is being bought by mobile phone group MTN (MTNJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research).

"We now have a presence (with) about 170 to 180 of the top 350 customers in South Africa," Ajay Pandey, Neotel's managing director, told a news briefing on Friday. "The contracts were worth more than 1.5 billion rand."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUKL136269820080801