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Bungling not good for VoIP
ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 22
August 2007
Regulatory bungling is hampering efforts to grow
the VoIP market in South Africa. Issues surrounding fixed line
portability, additional bandwidth capacity for VoIP, carrier pre-selection and high interconnection costs
should be addressed sooner rather than later.
Fixed line portability…
“Currently, we're simply offering the client a least-cost routing system because -
while we and the rest of the industry can provide an incoming and outgoing call service - customers don't want to
change their traditional phone numbers” (VoIP operators cry foul, Beb Kelly, Finweek, 10 August 2007). This is
according to Jaques du Toit, Marketing Director at Orion Telecoms.
In other words, fixed line portability must be implemented fast to ensure that fixed
line customers can keep their existing numbers without incurring high costs or go through an inconvenient switching
process.
“The increase in companies using direct dialling for their employees has created a
situation where the company is even more dependent on Telkom than in the past. And as long as Telkom maintains
ownership of those numbers it will be impossible for emerging operators to take ownership of the client” (VoIP
operators cry foul, Beb Kelly, Finweek, 10 August 2007).
In other words, Telkom will have to give up
numbers in order for VoIP
operators to take control of
clients.
Furthermore:
“Because Telkom owns the incoming calls it's very difficult for the VoIP operators to take their business models to
the next level, which would entail providing a entirely outsourced telecoms offering, including data, voice, fax
services and management offerings” (VoIP operators cry foul, Beb Kelly, Finweek, 10 August 2007).
In other words, Telkom is effectively stopping VoIP operators from offering
fully-fledged telecoms offerings of their
own.
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