Botswana Post launches Poso cloud

In their endeavor to connect communities to each other as well as bridging the digital divide, BotswanaPost has formed a strategic partnership with Cloudseed to provide reliable, affordable, high speed internet connectivity in public places, to individuals as well as for small to large scale businesses.

 
The Wi-fi dubbed Poso Cloud is already live at BotswanaPost headquarters in Gaborone and at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport. It was officially launched last week at Lansmore Hotel.
“We are on a journey to excellence and we have moved from a traditionalist post office to an ICT based company with ICT services hence the business and home connectivity brought to you by a partnership between Cloudseed and BotswanaPost. Such milestones drive us towards attaining our goal of being a P500 million revenue company by 2016, with a cost to income ratio of 60 per cent,” the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BotswanaPost, Pele Moleta said during the launch.

 
On her part, the CEO of Cloudseed Botswana, Connie Storom said,  “Cloudseed offers a comprehensive end-to-end suite of connectivity and cloud solutions that solve needs from the smallest SME’s (Small and Micro Enterprises) to large enterprise and government clients with a compelling value proposition and unsurpassed quality of service and user experience. With 70 million internet hits per day at speeds of up to 40 megabits per second. Just to give you an example, in Botswana we mostly operate at 2 megabits per second with an upper threshold in the region of 4 megabits per second.”

 
She further said that they have over 5000 servers and over 300 satellite points as well as running a 100 per cent open source environment at all the 1, 600 schools which have generated global interest in their model.
She said they will be able to deploy Wide Area Network Nodes that are able to reach and service both outlying and under-serviced areas without need for major infrastructure and completely independent of existing networks and the associated high cost and poor quality of service.

 
Even though Cloudseed is relatively a new player in the ICT market, they have already engaged on several initiatives with BotswanaPost.

 
“We are very much aware of government’s drive to provide equitable, reliable and affordable access to broadband and content development for all people. It is our vision as partners that every citizen in this country, regardless of wealth or social standing, and every business or government department in this country, should have access to connectivity and cloud solutions that are reliable, fast and affordable,” Storom said.

 
Cloudseed is a connectivity, ICT and cloud solutions organization with headquarters in South Africa and has recently extended its footprint into Botswana through its subsidiary, Cloudseed Botswana. The company’s main strength is the fast deployment of disruptive technology, connectivity and cloud based services.

 
“Some might ask; what is the cloud? At a very basic level the cloud is the internet or a network of servers and it has been around for a long time. However, thanks to advances in connectivity and high-speed bandwidth, you can now store data and run applications online on a remote server, instead of through physical hardware such as your phone, tablet or a desktop computer,” Storom added.