Neotel

Neotel, previously SNO Telecommunications, is the second national operator (SNO) for fixed line telecommunication services in South Africa. It was unveiled on 31 August 2006 in Kyalami in Midrand. Neotel is South Africa's first direct telecommunications competitor to the current telecommunications parastatal, Telkom.

The new company announced its business services on 15 November 2007 and its consumer services in May 2008. Its business services include local and international leased line services, as well as a suite of voice, data (VPN), and Internet offerings delivered over its converged, next-generation network.^[2] International Transit services for wholesale customers have been available since September 2006.^[3][4] They plan to use wireless broadband technologies, amongst others, which not only allows data transfers but also voice in the form of VOIP.^[5]

The arrival of a competitor is said to bring competitive pricing in terms of high speed internet (avg. 250 kbit/s to 750 kbit/s CDMA2000), broadband through WiMax, and later high speed broadband (xDSL and Fibre).^[6][7] For many years South Africa had only one telecommunications service, Telkom, which is partly government owned and partly private owned, but now for the first time people will have a choice of telecommunication services.^{[citation needed]}