Guido Neumann, Co-Founder and CEO of CETel, and now the Chief Development Officer and President EMEA of AXESS Networks. He has a very interesting background which served him well and CETel, the company he co-founded with a partner in 2004. After serving in the German Armed Forces and NATO as an officer in Command, Control, Communications and Information Systems, he moved to a then IT consulting firm, IABG in 1997. At IABG, he started a new Teleport division in 1999 to serve the newly launched LMI-1 satellite.
After accumulating valuable experience with customers around the world as Chief Commercial Officer for IABG’s teleport business, he saw an opportunity to provide more flexibility and value-added services. Neumann and his colleague, Martin Terlunen decided to start their own business and founded CETel in 2004. He helped build CETel from a two-person company operating from their home to a global player with extensive infrastructure and market presence that it is today. Excerpts of the interview with Neumann follows:
With the merger with Axesat, how do you see your company’s position the markets that you serve?
The merger with Axesat was a major step for CETel and the newly formed company AXESS Networks to achieve the next level of service provision. Due to the consolidation in the market over the last few years we now have only a handful of very big global service providers, let’s call them the “upper tier.” In addition we still have a lot--probably more than 300--of small and mostly local operators in the “lower tier.” The “upper tier”still have the advantage of providing services to global blue chip clients from different verticals. On the other hand these companies are having more and more problems in maintaining their flexibility and focus on the customer, which is fundamental for critical communications services. Some of the “upper tier” providers are distracted by their focus on shareholder value, high overheads and other concerns not related to their customers’ requirments.
For the lower tier and the small players it’s the other way around. They are flexible and customer focused but they don’t have the ability, assets
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| Guido Neumann |
and manpower to provide global services, coverage and support--which is more and more essential, especially for customers with global operations.
Due to the consolidation in our industry the “medium tier” is currently underserved. At AXESS Networks we perceive the medium tier as THE key segment for providing reliable and competitive global services. Staying flexible and customer-focused, while providing excellent communications services through our global presence and coverage. Therefore, our main strategic target is to position ourselves in this “medium tier”!
What can we expect from the merged company AXESS Networks in the coming year and beyond?
AXESS Networks will get recognized as a global service provider in the upcoming years. We are sure that we will significantly expand our customer base in all major verticals like Oil and Gas, Telco, Mining, Government, NGO, Maritime and others.
On the teleport business in general, what changes do you see affecting it and how are you coping or taking advantage of the opportunities as a company?
Our teleports are becoming global fundamental assets, mandatory to implement global networks and capable to serve upcoming requirements for global NMS, worldwide roaming, flexible capacity allocation, multiple beam usage, hybrid networks and others.
Where do you see your business in the next few years?
Apart from our strong organic growth strategy we still might consider further mergers and acquisition (M&A) activities, if they fit to our business and overall strategy. In addition, for any M&A activity, it’s crucial not to underestimate the complexity of the migration of assets, people, cultures, services and customers. M&A activities should bring real value to further enhance the provision of our services to our principal indicators: value, the customer and their needs.
In summary and as mentioned earlier, AXESS Networks aims to become the major player in the “medium tier” of service providers, serving global and local customers by providing professional services with highest quality of service by keeping its customer focus, flexibility and commercial competitiveness.
Anything else you would like to add?
The next years will become very exciting and challenging. Many people in our industry are already getting feared by getting confronted with the nearly daily news on the already launched and upcoming number of x-thousands of LEO satellites, the ongoing price pressure, the accelerated speed of terminal development (modem, antenna, etc.), further rollout of fibre and 5G and the growing complexity of customer applications (IoT, M2M, Swan, Cloud, etc.).
So should our industry becoming concerned, that in a few years all what we know today will be replaced by satellite services via a simple to install hand size device with the ability to serve unlimited data rates for a couple of dollars?
I always only have learned the following: The reality will never become only black or white, there are a thousand of different grey scales in between.
For our industry only one thing is important. We should always be ready and permanently think about how to use and migrate all these upcoming new technologies, inventions and developments into our portfolio to serve our customers in the future even better as we do already today.
