Following his appointment as new Orcon CEO this morning, Greg McAlister talks about the market opportunities for the privately owned business.
How is the telecommunications market changing?
As the Government's Ultra Fast Broadband initiative rolls out it will create considerable change and give rise to new market opportunities.
It will stimulate the launch of new products and compel retail service providers to adapt to new customer demands – in both the consumer and business markets.
It's a game changing technology that opens up extra bandwidth which in turn will see innovation flourish.
What opportunity does the arrival of UFB provide Orcon?
It is up to retail service providers to harness the potential of UFB. They need to deliver new services and make the benefits available to consumers and businesses.
I feel Orcon is leading the way in this regard and is very well positioned to grow its UFB services. My intention is to increase our focus in this area.
For consumers that means content-rich services and for small to medium businesses it means they will be able to realise the potential of cloud-based services.
Have SMEs been under served by ISPs to date?
I think business growth is being hampered by lack of bandwidth and we are going to be at the forefront of fixing that.
Where in the past the cloud has been the reserve of bigger corporates, the convergence of several factors will bring it within reach of smaller businesses.
Increased bandwidth, together with more flexible software and infrastructure provisioning are becoming available, and now it's up to retail service providers to bring it all together.
That is what Orcon will be doing – providing a service layer so all data services are robust, integrated and delivered seamlessly.
How will Orcon achieve this?
Orcon has the ability to provide this end-to-end service already, but we are investing in it further so it can scale to accommodate more customers.
We want to be large enough to deliver content rich products with the reliability consumers are crying out for from their service providers.
Why do you want to lead Orcon?
After 20 years working in big organisations, such as Vodafone and Telecom, leading Orcon will be a refreshing change.
The bigger a company gets the more siloed its divisions become and the more it struggles to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.
With Orcon I want to develop a 'one team' culture – where everyone pitches in to achieve customer focused goals. Our prime responsibility will be to meet customer expectations for innovation and service.
What are Orcon's key strengths?
The great thing about Orcon is it is well positioned to lead the way in the UFB market. It has a heritage of innovation, excellent people and is nimble enough to adapt quickly.
We are not sitting in an incumbent position with hundreds of thousands of customers on old plans.
We are in a position to bring new products to market quickly and offer customers innovative products and attractive services packages.
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