New voice data device
COMMUNICATIONS technology company Spescom is so proud of its latest invention that it posted an announcement to the stock exchange this week hailing it as a “new frontier” in voice recording technology.
The new Libra Mobile technology was remarkable not only because it was a world first, but also because it met a growing need within businesses to integrate the recording systems for both mobile and fixed line calls, said Kgabo Badimo, CEO of Spescom’s DataVoice subsidiary.
Libra Mobile records conversations made on a mobile device and stores them in an existing corporate database, where they can be accessed along with all other recorded calls. Libra Mobile equipment is installed at the customer’s premises and software is download over the air to selected cellphones so conversations can be recorded anywhere at anytime. The archived information can then be searched, retrieved, played back and e-mailed.
Businesses had to comply with the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act and the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, which require them to keep a record of their communications with clients, Badimo said.
Verbal conversations now form part of a contractual commitment, so companies needed to keep an accurate record of verbal exchanges on cellphones, especially as their workers become more mobile.
Spescom, founded in 1977, has delivered a number of world-first technologies. But it marked its 30th year by losing R20,4m on a turnover of R220m as slow liberalisation of SA’s telecoms sector delayed operators from spending on its services. It also lost money by mistiming an $8m global expansion drive to clash with a fall in technology spending.
Former CEO Tony Farah has criticised a lack of support for local innovations. SA should nurture its technology companies because they were disappearing, he said, as great ideas either fizzled out or were bought by foreign companies.
“Investors frown upon anyone who does their own technology development in SA because they feel they are wasting their time, whereas in any other country they nurture them,” he said shortly before he stepped down last year.
He slated SA’s financial regulations for shackling local players by making it difficult to win exchange control approval to take money abroad to support global operations.
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