MNF subsidiary wins NZ government telco services contract

MNF subsidiary Conference Call International (CCI) has announced winning a contract to supply New Zealand government agencies with its audio, web, and operator-assisted conferencing solutions.

The contract was awarded under one of the government's five telecommunications-as-a-service procurement (TaaS) towers, the "Communications Tower", which involves unified communications and audio/visual conferencing technology.

According to MNF CEO Rene Sugo, CCI is unique in offering encrypted call conferencing, which is important for government services.

"Voice encryption technology aims to prevent unauthorised listening-in on conference calls. For government agencies, this additional level of protection provided by this type of technology helps ensure call confidentiality, security, and, most importantly, peace of mind," Sugo said.

CCI general manager Andrea Goding said the company has been providing conferencing solutions to government departments and enterprises for over 15 years, but this contract is the first it has gained under the New Zealand government's TaaS initiative.

The four other TaaS service "towers" are connectivity, including GNet site connectivity, personal mobile connectivity, and PSTN access and calling; managed security, including internet, device, and identity security; contact centre, including automation services, inbound-outbound multi-channel services, and optimisation services; and aggregation, which includes specialist telco aggregation and service management.

The government agencies involved in the TaaS program include Treasury; Inland Revenue; Human Rights Commission; Ministry of Education; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Justice; Institute of Environmental Science and Research Limited; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; Ministry of Maori Development Te Puni Kokiri; Department of Internal Affairs; New Zealand Transport Agency; Fire Service; Health and Disability Commissioner; Public Trust; Statistics New Zealand; Civil Aviation Authority NZ; Department of Conservation; various regional, district, and city councils; and multiple educational and financial agencies.

MNF had last year said its AU$17.5 million acquisition of conferencing provider CCI had been "progressing well", with the company having reached all of its project milestones during the FY17 financial year.

"These include staff integration, finance integration, network integration, and number porting to our network," MNF explained.

"The CCI business is itself performing well, meeting all pre-acquisition expectations for the first five months."

MNF acquired audio conferencing and collaboration services company CCI a year ago thanks to a "heavily oversubscribed" institutional and sophisticated investor share placement and share purchase plan offer.

"The acquisition of CCI provides MNF a significant entry into the audio conferencing and collaboration market in Australia and the region. These applications generate high-margin recurring revenues, with potential for consistent long-term growth and innovation potential," Sugo said at the time.

"These applications are an excellent fit with the current MNF business, enterprise, and government sub-segment, as well as a high-value synergy with the group's domestic and global network assets."

The company on Thursday said that since the acquisition, it has invested AU$1.5 million into CCI's infrastructure "to deliver new technological capabilities".

MNF Group reported a full-year net profit of AU$12.1 million, up 34 percent, and revenue of AU$191.8 million, up 19 percent, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of AU$23.9 million, up 34 percent.

These figures included five months of contributions from CCI and 12 months of Telecom New Zealand International (TNZI) US.

MNF said it would continue to push growth through geographic expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, with such expansion to be driven by its Global Wholesale segment as it invests in further network assets.

In October, MNF Group also announced a partnership with BroadSoft to deliver MyNetFone unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) voice and collaboration services on BroadCloud to its subsidiary Symbio Networks.

The services suite will be based on the Business UC-One application, and will be offered to MNF's enterprise and government customers by the first quarter of 2018 across both Australia and New Zealand.

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