Arc Telecom, a start-up company established by former iBurst Business staff, is taking aim at the small and medium-sized business market with its converged telecommunication services. The company will offer its services from Thursday.

The company’s CEO, Steve Briggs, says the traditional telecommunications players have neglected the small business market. His company will address this market with a selection of voice and data services aimed at businesses with between 20 and 200 staff members.

Arc was initially established as an iBurst Business division. In July, former iBurst CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jr acquired a 50% stake in the business from iBurst’s owner, Wireless Business Solutions (WBS).

Briggs and his two business partners, Paven Chetty and Michelle McCann, bought the rest of the shares in the company.

Blue Label Telecoms, a shareholder in WBS, had initially planned to invest in the new business, but decided not to for “strategic reasons”.

Arc will provide voice and data services over a core network built and managed by Neology, which already provides network services to a number of Internet service providers.

Arc has signed partnerships with telecom providers such as WBS, Vodacom and Neotel to offer fibre and wireless connectivity to its clients at the last mile.

It will also work with ThinkIT to provide technical services to small businesses.

Arc will be providing Internet protocol-based voice services to its customers.

It will be reselling services from an unnamed wholesale voice provider which already has interconnect agreements in place with the major networks. — Candice Jones, TechCentral