Jayendra Naidoo, CEO of J&J, comments, "Our investment in UUNet SA is exciting, given our aspirations to invest in an African telecommunications company. The global reach of MCI and the high-quality backbone infrastructure in SA will assist in achieving our goal. We will apply our combined energies to scale up the operations of UUNet SA through the input of key J&J executives.

"This acquisition is a logical extension of building an IT platform over the last five years through our various IT ventures and partnerships. Given the rapid convergence of technologies, and the policy reform process being driven by government, we see major opportunities emerging. We are in an excellent position to maximize this, because of our track record in this sector."

Crawford concludes by saying that here will be no significant changes in the organization in the short term, such as reshuffling, other than J&J having one to three seats on the board.