TCS | Rebooting Cell C: Jorge Mendes sets out his strategic plan

Loading player...
Jorge Mendes has been in the hot seat at Cell C for just over a year, and the turnaround at the long-troubled mobile operator is starting to gain traction.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Mendes sits down with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod for a detailed interview in which he provides an update on what’s happened in the past year at Cell C, paints of a picture of the state of the business today, and sets out what comes next for the mobile operator.
To signal the management team’s intentions, and to declare the business is on a new strategic footing and is in the market for the long term, Cell C recently refreshed its brand identity and signalled its intention to take back market share from its bigger rivals.
In this episode of TCS, Mendes tackles a range of questions, including:
• Why he left what seemed to be a plum job at Vodacom to take on the difficult challenge of turning around Cell C;
• What went through his mind in the first few days on the job;
• Cell C’s plan to recapture the title of third largest mobile operator from Telkom – and to take the fight to MTN and Vodacom;
• Why Cell C has struggled to compete, how it accumulated huge amounts of debt and why the new strategy is its best but last chance of success;
• The state of Cell C’s finances – and especially its balance sheet – following the recent recapitalisation led by its largest shareholder, Blue Label Telecoms;
• His relationship with Blue Label founders and co-CEOs Brett Levy and Mark Levy;
• The role of regulatory support, especially in call termination;
• Why Cell C handed back the spectrum it secured in the 2022 spectrum auction, and its plans for participation in future auctions;
• The role of mobile virtual network operators and wholesale services in Cell C’s recovery plan; and
• Cell C’s strategy to capture more of the lucrative contract market.
There’s plenty more in the interview with Mendes – don’t miss the conversation!
13 Sep 2024 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Frogfoot sees bigger fibre deals coming

Frogfoot plans to keep buying smaller fibre network operators in South Africa’s suburbs as the market consolidates, but CEO Shane Chorley stopped short of ruling out a sale of the business. “I’d be ignorant to say that we would ignore any offer,” Chorley said on the latest episode of the…
8 Oct 40 min

Meet the CIO | Vodacom’s Mohamed Sami on the agentic future

Mohamed Sami, group chief information officer at Vodacom, says autonomous AI agents that resolve customer problems without handing them to a human are the next big shift in customer experience – and that it is closer than many think. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you…
5 Oct 44 min

TCS | Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret…
1 Oct 28 min

TCS | Dominic White and Adam Ely on AI agents going rogue

AI agents are no longer a thought experiment for security teams. They are breaking out of test environments, hacking real companies and, according to one of our guests, already going rogue inside large businesses. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen talks to Dominic…
29 Sep 1 hr 26 min

TCS | Octotel’s Trevor van Zyl on the fibre merger question

Octotel CEO Trevor van Zyl joins the TechCentral Show to talk about where South Africa’s fibre market goes next – including a potential merger with MetroFibre Networx. Van Zyl told TechCentral that Octotel and MetroFibre Networx are assessing a combination that would create the country’s third-largest fibre network operator, with…
16 Sep 25 min