Telkom SA is South Africa's leading telecommunications provider offering voice, data, and broadband services. Operates in more than 38 African countries with converged fixed-line, mobile, and broadband solutions.
Telkom is South Africa’s incumbent telecommunications operator and the largest fixed-line infrastructure provider in the country, with group revenue of R43.9 billion for the year ended March 2025. Operating through its consumer, business, and wholesale (Openserve) divisions, Telkom provides fibre broadband, mobile services, SIP trunking, cloud PBX, managed voice, data connectivity, and IT services to millions of South African consumers and businesses. For telecoms resellers, Telkom is both a critical infrastructure partner — providing the underlying fibre, copper, and mobile networks that many reseller services depend upon — and a competitor in the enterprise voice and data market. Understanding Telkom’s product portfolio, wholesale offerings, and strategic direction is essential for any reseller operating in the South African telecoms landscape.
Telkom SA SOC Limited is South Africa’s incumbent telecommunications operator, tracing its origins to the country’s former Department of Posts and Telecommunications. Corporatised in 1991 and partially privatised through a JSE listing in 2003, Telkom has evolved from a monopoly fixed-line provider into a multi-faceted telecommunications group with significant mobile, fibre, IT services, and infrastructure businesses. Under CEO Serame Taukobong, who has been credited with orchestrating a strategic turnaround, Telkom reported group revenue of R43.9 billion for the financial year ending March 2025, with EBITDA growing 25.1% to R11.8 billion.
The group operates through four primary divisions. Telkom Consumer provides fixed and mobile services to individual customers, including fibre broadband, mobile data and voice, and home connectivity packages. Telkom Business — operating largely through BCX, its enterprise IT services subsidiary — delivers managed voice, data connectivity, cloud services, cybersecurity, and IT solutions to corporate customers and government. Openserve is South Africa’s largest open-access wholesale infrastructure provider, operating the country’s most extensive fixed-line network including fibre, copper, and national backbone infrastructure. Gyro manages Telkom’s mast and tower portfolio, which is increasingly valuable as mobile operators seek to share infrastructure.
Telkom occupies a unique position in the South African telecoms ecosystem — it is simultaneously a wholesale infrastructure provider, a retail competitor, and a potential partner for resellers. Through Openserve, Telkom provides the underlying fibre and copper last-mile connectivity that many independent ISPs, VoIP providers, and telecoms resellers use to deliver services to their own customers. The Openserve network passes 1.38 million homes with fibre (as at March 2025) with a 50.4% connectivity rate, and provides wholesale broadband and ethernet services to hundreds of downstream service providers.
For telecoms resellers, understanding Telkom’s wholesale products and pricing is essential for building competitive service offerings. SIP trunk and hosted PBX resellers depend on Telkom’s underlying connectivity for service delivery, while ISPs rely on Openserve fibre and ethernet access for their broadband products. At the same time, Telkom Business and BCX compete directly with resellers for enterprise voice and IT services contracts, creating a complex dynamic where Telkom is both supplier and competitor. Resellers who understand this landscape can identify opportunities where they can add value that Telkom’s direct channels do not — typically in personalised service, niche expertise, and solution customisation for specific verticals.
Telkom provides fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) broadband through the Openserve network. Consumer fibre plans range from entry-level 20 Mbps packages through to high-speed 200 Mbps and above offerings, bundled with LTE failover on selected plans. Business fibre provides dedicated, uncontended bandwidth with SLA-backed uptime guarantees, available in symmetrical configurations from 10 Mbps through to multiple Gbps for enterprise customers. Telkom’s fibre footprint continues to expand, with the company investing in extending Openserve coverage to new suburbs and business parks across South Africa.
Telkom’s mobile division has been the standout growth story in the group, reaching 23.2 million subscribers by March 2025 — a 13.4% year-on-year increase. The mobile business provides voice, data, and LTE/5G broadband services through a combination of Telkom’s own network and national roaming agreements. For business customers, Telkom Mobile offers fleet management solutions, mobile device plans, LTE backup connectivity, and IoT SIM services. The mobile network’s data-centric positioning — offering competitive data bundles and LTE broadband packages — has driven rapid subscriber growth, particularly among price-conscious consumers and small businesses.
Telkom Business provides premium SIP trunking services delivered over Metro Ethernet fibre access through BCX. The solution includes SIP sessions, quality-enabled access with dedicated bandwidth for voice traffic, a managed Cisco router, and service-level agreements guaranteeing uptime and call quality. For enterprise customers migrating from Telkom ISDN PRI circuits to SIP, this represents the natural upgrade path within the Telkom ecosystem. Telkom also offers standard SIP trunk services for businesses connecting their own PBX systems to the Telkom voice network.
Telkom offers both cloud-hosted PBX solutions and traditional on-premise PABX systems for business customers. The cloud PBX eliminates the need for on-site hardware, providing a scalable, subscription-based phone system with features including auto-attendant, call queuing, voicemail-to-email, and mobile integration. For customers who prefer on-premise solutions, Telkom supplies and supports PABX hardware from leading manufacturers, combined with its SIP trunk or ISDN connectivity services. The company provides professional installation, configuration, and ongoing support for both deployment models.
Openserve is the wholesale division that makes Telkom particularly relevant to the broader telecoms reseller community. Openserve provides open-access fibre connectivity that ISPs and service providers can resell to their own customers, wholesale Ethernet services for business connectivity, national and international IP transit, and infrastructure co-location and facility leasing. Openserve’s fibre-to-the-home product allows ISPs to offer residential fibre broadband without building their own last-mile infrastructure, while the wholesale Ethernet and IP transit services enable business-focused resellers to deliver enterprise connectivity.
BCX, Telkom’s enterprise IT services subsidiary, provides managed IT services, cloud computing, cybersecurity, unified communications, and digital transformation consulting to corporate and government customers. BCX competes in the enterprise market with companies like Dimension Data (NTT), Datacentrix, and EOH, offering end-to-end IT solutions that combine Telkom’s network infrastructure with application development, systems integration, and managed services. For telecoms resellers focused on the enterprise segment, BCX is a significant competitor with the advantage of Telkom’s network assets.
Telkom’s history stretches back to the earliest days of telecommunications in South Africa. The company was corporatised in 1991 from the telecommunications division of the South African Post Office, which had operated the country’s telephone network since the late nineteenth century. Telkom was granted an exclusive fixed-line licence that lasted until 2005, during which period it invested heavily in expanding and modernising the national telecommunications infrastructure.
A partial privatisation in 1997 saw a consortium led by SBC Communications (now AT&T) and Telekom Malaysia acquire a 30% stake, bringing international management expertise and technology investment. Telkom listed on the JSE in 2003 and on the New York Stock Exchange (since delisted). The company launched its mobile division in 2010, initially using CDMA technology before transitioning to LTE, and acquired BCX (formerly Business Connexion) in 2015 to strengthen its enterprise IT services capabilities. Under Serame Taukobong’s leadership, Telkom has pursued a data-led strategy that has transformed it from a declining fixed-line operator into a diversified telecoms and technology group.
Telkom’s primary differentiator is the breadth and scale of its infrastructure. As South Africa’s incumbent operator, Telkom owns the largest fixed-line network in the country — including the copper local loop that still serves millions of premises, the rapidly expanding Openserve fibre network, and a significant portion of the national backbone infrastructure. This infrastructure position gives Telkom a cost advantage in delivering connectivity services and makes Openserve an essential wholesale partner for the hundreds of ISPs and service providers that depend on last-mile access to reach their customers.
The combination of fixed, mobile, and enterprise IT capabilities under one corporate umbrella is another unique strength. Telkom can offer converged solutions that bundle fibre broadband, mobile connectivity, voice services, and IT management into integrated packages for business customers — a capability that few South African competitors can match. The mobile division’s rapid growth to 23.2 million subscribers demonstrates the group’s ability to compete effectively beyond its traditional fixed-line base, and the data-centric mobile positioning has resonated strongly with cost-conscious South African consumers.
Telkom remains one of the most influential companies in South African telecommunications, touching virtually every segment of the market from residential broadband to enterprise IT services. The company’s transformation under Serame Taukobong has been widely recognised — EBITDA growth of 25.1% in FY2025 and mobile subscriber growth of 13.4% demonstrate the success of the data-led strategy. Telkom’s fibre business through Openserve continues to expand, with fibre data revenue growing 5.9% driven by a 13.3% increase in homes passed to 1.38 million.
For the independent telecoms reseller community, Telkom’s dual role as infrastructure provider and market competitor creates both opportunities and challenges. The opportunity lies in Openserve’s wholesale products — fibre access, Ethernet services, and IP transit — which enable resellers to build their own branded services on Telkom’s infrastructure. The challenge is competing against Telkom Business and BCX in the enterprise market, where Telkom can bundle its own network with IT services and voice solutions. Successful resellers differentiate through specialisation, personalised service, faster response times, and expertise in specific verticals or technologies that Telkom’s large-scale operations cannot match.
The ongoing decommissioning of legacy Telkom ISDN circuits is creating a significant market opportunity for VoIP resellers. As Telkom migrates its voice infrastructure from circuit-switched to IP-based services, thousands of South African businesses need to transition from ISDN to SIP trunking — a migration that independent VoIP providers and resellers are well-positioned to facilitate, often offering more competitive pricing and more personalised service than Telkom’s own migration path.
Telkom engages with the reseller community primarily through Openserve’s wholesale channel for infrastructure services. ISPs and service providers can become Openserve customers to access wholesale fibre, Ethernet, and IP transit products, which they then package and resell to their own customer base. The Openserve wholesale relationship requires commercial agreements covering service levels, billing, and technical interfaces.
For resellers interested in Telkom Business products — including SIP trunking, cloud PBX, and managed services — engagement typically occurs through Telkom’s enterprise sales channel or through BCX’s partner programme. BCX works with systems integrators, IT resellers, and managed-service providers who complement its capabilities in specific technology areas or geographic regions. Resellers interested in partnering with Telkom Business or BCX should contact their commercial teams directly to discuss partnership models and requirements.
Telkom’s services are delivered directly to end customers through its own sales channels — retail stores, online portals, direct enterprise sales teams, and customer service centres — as well as through wholesale relationships with ISPs and service providers who resell Telkom-originated services. Openserve’s fibre network is accessed by downstream service providers through wholesale commercial agreements, with the ISP handling the customer relationship and billing while Openserve provides the underlying connectivity.
There is no traditional distribution channel for Telkom’s services in the way that hardware products are distributed through companies like MiRO or Scoop. Instead, Telkom’s reseller relationships are structured as service-provider agreements where the reseller purchases wholesale connectivity or voice services and repackages them for their own customers. For hardware products like PBX systems that Telkom sells through its business division, the company works with the original equipment manufacturers’ distribution channels or sources directly.
Yes, Openserve provides open-access wholesale fibre connectivity that licensed ISPs and service providers can resell to their own customers. You need to be an ICASA-licensed electronic communications service provider and enter into a wholesale commercial agreement with Openserve. Once onboarded, you can offer Openserve fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-business products under your own brand, handling the customer relationship while Openserve provides the underlying fibre infrastructure and layer-one connectivity.
Telkom has been progressively migrating its voice infrastructure from circuit-switched ISDN to IP-based services as part of its broader network modernisation strategy. While there has been no single announced cutoff date, the practical availability of new ISDN connections has been declining, and Telkom actively encourages business customers to migrate to SIP trunking and cloud voice solutions. South African businesses still on Telkom ISDN should plan their migration to SIP trunking through either Telkom’s own SIP services or through independent VoIP providers and resellers.
Telkom’s premium SIP trunking is delivered over dedicated Metro Ethernet fibre access with managed Cisco routers and SLA-backed quality of service, making it suitable for enterprise customers who need guaranteed call quality. Independent VoIP providers like Switch Telecom, Euphoria, and others typically offer SIP trunks over standard internet connections at lower price points with more flexible contract terms. The choice depends on whether your priority is guaranteed quality with enterprise SLAs or cost savings with month-to-month flexibility.
Openserve is Telkom’s wholesale infrastructure division that operates South Africa’s largest open-access fixed-line network, including fibre, copper, and national backbone infrastructure. Openserve provides wholesale connectivity to hundreds of ISPs and service providers who resell broadband, Ethernet, and voice services to their own customers. While Openserve is part of the Telkom group, it operates as a functionally separated entity that provides infrastructure access on equivalent terms to both Telkom’s own retail divisions and independent service providers.
Yes, Telkom offers a cloud-hosted PBX solution that provides a subscription-based business phone system without on-premise hardware. The cloud PBX includes features such as auto-attendant, call queuing, voicemail-to-email, ring groups, and mobile integration. Telkom also continues to offer on-premise PABX solutions for businesses that prefer traditional hardware-based phone systems. Both options can be combined with Telkom’s SIP trunking or fibre broadband services for a complete voice and connectivity solution.