That sounds like a classic rebranding. But it is more than that. The transition from Telindus to Proximus NXT looks like the starting point for a new era of going faster and stronger.
Can you tell us why you needed to change the name of the company?
Christian Haux (C.H.): Telindus had already disappeared in Belgium in 2011-2012. Proximus NXT appeared last year and has a good reputation in the IT sector. We’ve seen steady annual growth over the last few years, which is a sign that customers have confidence in us. Our net promoter score has risen year on year. There has been no deterioration in service, on the contrary, and yet we continue to grow. On the business side, we employ 800 people. With the change, we can activate some levers that will be interesting for us. In Belgium, we have Proximus NXT for the professional market, and in Luxembourg we’re doing the same thing. We will have this single brand that will bring everything together.”
(G.H.): There are three dimensions to this brand change. The first is to harmonise the brand across the group. We want to make things simpler and more understandable for the market. Increasingly, we are addressing the same customers in the Benelux countries. Each group entity delivers services to the same customer. For us, the domestic market is the Benelux, even with subsidiaries that work internationally. The Proximus brand will be used there. The Netherlands is changing its brand on the same day, from Telindus to Proximus NXT.
The second priority is the future: we need to be ready to deal with the current upheavals in the market. IT is the fastest-growing sector. We have an advantage over other industries because digitalisation is progressing rapidly, and this dynamic will be reinforced by the rise of artificial intelligence and its tools, particularly generative AI. These technologies will revolutionise productivity, whether in text, image or voice processing. In industry and in services.
The third message is to tell the market that we also have a telecoms heritage with Proximus, which is the incumbent operator in Belgium, whereas Telindus was an IT integration company. Since the merger between Tango and Telindus in 2019, we have developed quite an impressive portfolio of products for the professional telecoms market, and the change of brand should also reflect this maturity that we have achieved for businesses. The Tango brand will continue to exist for the residential market. This is a very local market, whereas on the business market, we have solutions that can easily cross borders. We have solutions that are managed from Luxembourg, but which meet the needs of the whole group. We handle needs in the Benelux countries and elsewhere, such as Switzerland, from Luxembourg. Recently, we announced our sovereign cloud solution with Google and LuxConnect, Clarence, which we are piloting here.
Luxembourg’s challenge as a country is to improve its productivity. The country needs access to technology. Several players need to make these technologies available.
C.H.: We are really focused on four activities. The cloud, in all its forms, sovereign, disconnected... With the sovereign part, we stand out from the market. Then there’s telecoms. Cybersecurity and security, an activity that is often difficult to see because it is buried within the company’s activities, but we have around a hundred people working on it, from prevention to supervision, intervention, correction and investigation... And we build the infrastructure.
In the case of certain attacks on the market, we were able to rebuild a complete environment for a customer, enabling him to restart his business. Then there’s the ICT and integrator side, which we thought would decline in favour of others, but which continues to grow year on year. This includes outsourcing and managed services, which can take a variety of forms, from a simple obligation to provide resources to taking charge of a complete environment on behalf of a customer. Artificial intelligence comes on top of all that. We see huge traction in the market.
How do we stand out from the other players in the market?
G.H.: We have a very comprehensive portfolio in everything to do with communications and infrastructure, and that's our strength. We have eliminated all legal entities, we have created flat hierarchies, we have introduced an agile model for management with tributes and chapters, that sort of thing, to react as quickly as possible in the market. With the arrival of AI, we think we’ve bet on the right horse with our investments, both Microsoft and Google, our two major partners. Another fast-growing area is quantum communications. The last 10 to 15 years have seen the rise of 5G and the cloud. The future will be dominated by AI and quantum technologies. We are at a decisive turning point and we are in a unique position. Some people are trying to follow us…
How do you compare with your competitors?
G.H.: We’re ahead of the game in the IT field, being the leader in Luxembourg in terms of headcount. Our regional reach also gives us additional resources, thanks in particular to partnerships with major players like Microsoft and Google, which give us privileged access to their services. The new brand will also boost our visibility, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses.
And what are you hoping to achieve overall? Something we can put a figure on?
G.H.: “We want to achieve double-digit growth in the professional segment addressed by Proximus NXT. The Proximus group in Luxembourg currently has annual revenues of €400m. Our ambition is to reach €500m over three to five years, with Tango. We’re in the right sector. We’ll have a good brand. We have a strong regional base. Everything we need to be successful. The market is growing so fast that there’s even the possibility of complementing the competition. It would be a shame to destroy the value in a market provided by a traditional player.
Luxembourg’s challenge as a country is to improve its productivity. The country must have access to technologies. Several players need to make these technologies available. We have chosen to focus on sovereignty, with the full range of AI tools that will be much easier to deploy with a sovereign cloud. Everyone is afraid to put their data in the public cloud: industry, banks, funds, etc. We are setting up this infrastructure for professionals. Being completely disconnected is a unique situation. We have a huge number of requests. The gap we need to fill is moving from infrastructure to applications. In some areas, we are looking for partners with proven solutions.”
Is this rebranding accompanied by significant investment?
C.H.: There are logistical costs, but we are already Proximus. It’s a different dimension that gives us advantages, but we didn’t wait for this change to invest. As is the case with the sovereign cloud…
G.H.: As far as AI is concerned, we already knew about it ten years ago, and we started investing even then! Nvidia, at the centre of this development, has been around for a while. It took ten years for it to enter the mainstream and for players like us, who use technology for end customers, to have access to it.
This article was originally published in .