Neotel was licensed as a direct competitor to Telkom, intended to provide services in the fixed line telephony space and open up the market to competition as part of the Department of Communications’ Managed Liberalisation Policy.

The process to license the second network operator kicked off in 2002. A combination of factors (not least of which was interference in the process by the DoC and a court case) resulted in the licence eventually being awarded in December 2005.