Intel Corp. last week announced that Steve Nossel will be moving on, having been appointed to the position of regional enterprise business manager for the EMEA region.

Taking his place will be Intel veteran Jacques van Schalkwyk, who has been with the company for 12 years, initially in SA, and, more recently, in Europe.

Speaking at the announcement, Nossel said that local office had done well in recent years, and that it had doubled its efforts in the last year in terms of increasing its staff complement, and increasing its forays into Africa. The local team has been to 12 African countries this year, conducting roadshows and establishing relationships with local integrators.

?The biggest challenge that we have faced in Africa has been branding,? he comments. ?We were very surprised to discover that the African market does not accept the Celeron brand, and that users would rather buy second-hand machines with Pentium processors, due to the brand weight that the Pentium name holds.?

On the BEE ICT Charter, Nossel says that the company established an internal task team two months ago, and is working hard to ensure that the local office is compliant. ?We have 15 staff members on the task team, and are making use of our European resources as well.

?There is a lot to be done, but we hope to have a good plan in place to begin executing when the charter takes effect on March 1.

?Intel has been involved in the process through the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) for the past year, and has seen really positive goodwill to make it work from all participants,? he adds.

?We will deal with the equity issue when the time comes,? he notes. ?As the branch office of a multinational it is obviously difficult for us to value the local operation. There is an opportunity to apply for special dispensation though, and we will consider our options when the time comes.

?At the moment we already score 100 percent on CSI. Also,? he notes, ?we do not tender directly, we tender through partners.? Nevertheless: ?This is something we take very seriously, and at which we will work very hard,? he states.

Intel has also signed a carrier trade agreement with Telkom SA Ltd., which will see it rolling out WiMax pilot sites with Telkom in Johannesburg and Cape Town in the next two months.

?With WiMax, access will become a lot easier,? Nossel says, ?WiMax can, for example, stream multimedia to home users very cost-effectively. Once we have the capability, we will start to see mass deployment, whereafter business models will develop, prices will drop, and the regulatory constraints change.?