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It took Nyati just three days to clinch the deal with the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), which will see workers returning to work tomorrow.
In an interview with City Press, Nyati said he would now focus on attracting businesses to MTN’s IT services offerings, includinge-commerce, intranets and private networks to improve revenue.
“Our direct business with individual consumers is declining because the price of voice calls is continuously coming down every day.
“If we just sit there and do nothing we’re going to find ourselves in deep trouble.
“We have to go and find new ways of compensating for the losses happening on the other side,” said Nyati.
Nyati takes over the hot seat from Ahmad Farroukh, who initially cited family reasons for his resignation, but surprisingly later emerged as chief executive of Saudi Arabian phone company Etihad Etisalat.
While Nyati said Farroukh “resigned for reasons that are known to him”, the CWU claimed Farroukh’s scalp, saying that he had not been able to manage the strike.
The union claimed Farroukh was “arrogant” during strike talks and that a similar deal to end the strike would not have been possible under his watch.
CWU general secretary Aubrey Tshabalala said: “Although MTN has had a hostile relationship with labour, that arrogance became intense under Farroukh.
“If anything, it was the workers’ strike that forced Farroukh to leave.
“With Nyati leading the negotiations to end the strike, it was clear he knew what he was doing and listened to us. That’s why the deal was struck with Nyati and not Farroukh.”
With MTN SA posting disappointing results last year compared with operations in other countries, the company is on a massive drive to convince companies to outsource their IT divisions to use MTN data centres.
“If companies are looking for data centres, we give them space where they can put their servers here [at MTN] and we run their IT,” said Nyati.
He said MTN Business’ multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) technology – which carries data from one network to another – was ideal for voice-over IP, another important strategy to boost growth.
“Many companies today are operating across borders, but they don’t have infrastructure that can connect them to other countries. We’ve put together the MPLS network, a separate system that companies use to send information across borders without any issues,” he said.
MTN was also hopeful that the lifting of sanctions in Iran, one of 22 countries in which the company operated, would allow the company to draw the more than $1 billion (R12.34 billion) it could not take out of Iran due to trade sanctions.
“Each year we had money we couldn’t take out of Iran. If the sanctions are lifted, we would have access to those funds and use them in our new ventures.
“It’s been a number of years and billions of dollars. It’s something that will help the group,” said Nyati, who joined MTN from Microsoft nine months ago to lead the group’s enterprise and ICT strategy.
Nyati was confident that MTN SA’s venture into “nontraditional” avenues would bring it new revenue.
“We’ve invested in platforms that enable easy fleet management where companies can track their vehicles in real time and send information to the driver or reroute the person, allowing companies to manage their fleets.
“There’s competition in that market, but we’re enabling existing players to use our system because the cost of running it is much lower since we’re sharing that system with others.
“It makes sense for companies if they’re trying to reduce costs,” said Nyati.
He said MTN was working with municipalities that wanted to remotely switch their electricity on and off because of load shedding.
“We can do that and you will see more of it happening now with municipalities,” he said.
