VoIP’s the word
The figures don’t include any statistics for the African continent. But, from a South African perspective, given that VoIP was only fully legalised at the beginning of February, this is hardly surprising.
Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests switched-on South African consumers have already been using solutions like Skype for some time and have continued to do so since February. But, there appears to be little by way of statistical evidence to support this.
Rudolph Muller, the founder of local broadband portal MyADSL, which seems to have a loyal following among broadband fundis, says he has been unable to find any stats on consumer VoIP use in South Africa. But, according to a recent poll of MyADSL users, 219 out of 283 voters said they used Skype.
Skype is free software that can be downloaded from the Internet, and provided the user on the other end has also downloaded the software; the users can speak to each other via their PC for free (other than the cost of the bandwidth). Skype can also be used from PC to phone, at a generally lower cost than that of using a traditional telco network like that of Telkom.
Another PC based solution is called VoiceGlo.
But, Muller said given its functionality, Skype was undoubtedly the best-known and well-used consumer VoIP solution in South Africa.
At its recent annual results, Telkom announced that it was investigating upgrading to an IP-based network that would support VoIP solutions.
Point Topic said the number of consumers using VoIP had more than doubled between the middle of last year (roughly 5-m) and the first quarter this year (about 11-m). The highest number of users, or more than half (7,2-m), are in Japan, followed by the USA. But, Europe, was becoming more competitive. Point Topic said it had obtained the data from published VoIP user figures, and estimates where these were not available.
Source: http://www.moneyweb.co.za
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