Neotel (Pty) Ltd., previously SNO Telecommunications, is the much anticipated second national operator (SNO) for fixed line telecommunication services in South Africa. It was unveiled on 2006-08-31 in Kyalami in northern Johannesburg. Neotel is South Africa's first direct telecommunications competitor to the current telecommunications parastatal, Telkom.The new company announced its business servi
ces on 2007-11-15 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. International Transit services for wholesale customers have been available since September 2006. They plan to use wireless broadband technologies, amongst others, which not only allows data transfers but also voice in the form of VOIP.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 Fiber).[6][7] For many years South Africa has 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.
