Telkom Voice over WiMax here soon

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Telkom was the first company in South Africa to launch a commercial WiMax service in June 2007.  This service was however never planned as a standalone product, but is rather used as an ‘ADSL substitute’ in areas where users can not get ADSL services.

Every ADSL customer also effectively purchases an analogue phone service from Telkom, giving them immediate voice services with their broadband services.  This is however not the case with WiMax where subscribers only get 512 Kbps Internet access with the service.  This is however set to change.

Telkom is close to launching a ‘voice-over-WiMax’ service.  According to Telkom Wholesale’s Mike Vos the company has been working on a voice over broadband (VoBB) product for a long time, and they are set to launch a VoIP service for WiMax customers within the next two months.

There have been rumors that Telkom is also planning a VoIP service for DSL subscribers.  But according to Vos there isn’t a solid business model for such an offering.  Messaging services like Skype have long offered free VoIP calls over the Internet, and users can also make and receive phone calls from landlines or mobile phones using Skype.

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