VoIP operators cry foul
Jaques du Toit, marketing director at Orion Telecoms, says the lack of movement in implementing fixed line portability is continuing to hamper VoIP growth.
"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," says Du Toit.
That's because although VoIP operators have been given their own set of numbers they can allocate to clients, starting with 087, every fixed line customer has an existing set of numbers and giving those up would entail a great inconvenience as well as substantial cost to the client.
Du Toit says ownership of those numbers by Telkom represents a crucial barrier preventing VoIP operators from obtaining a larger slice of the corporate telecoms pie.
"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.
"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."
Du Toit says that the recent prices published by Telkom for calls to 087 numbers over its lines – which make calls to those numbers among the most expensive local calls a client can make – are simply an example of Telkom abusing its dominant market position and trying to spread distrust of those numbers, especially in the consumer market.
Du Toit says Orion is also suffering due to the delays by Telkom in providing bandwidth to clients wanting to deploy VoIP solutions. He alleges that Orion has more than 150 customers waiting for Telkom to deliver additional capacity to their premises and that was costing it millions of rand in lost revenue every month.
"We're waiting for the process of deregulating this market to be completed, but it looks like that will take another two years.
Until then we'll have to fight Telkom every inch of the way to build our market share," Du Toit says.
Dumisani Nkala, MD of Telconet, says the industry is desperately in need of a more unified voice to obtain what it needs of future telecoms regulations.
"This lobby group needs to consist of not just industry players but also customers so that a unified front can be presented for the VoIP industry," she says.
Nkala adds her voice to the critical chorus concerning Telkom's proposed rates to 087 numbers. "There's no justification for such high rates, especially when you consider that some of the alternative operators are charging as little as 8c/minute and Telkom is adding between 52c and 56c on top of that."
She adds that the high interconnection costs to SA's mobile operators have the same effect – to hamper the sector's growth.
"At the moment the Vans are isolated islands of telecoms and those need to be linked up to the mainstream telecoms operators in a cost effective way. But that's impossible at the moment due to the obstructive nature of the mainstream operators."
Dave Gale, MD of Storm Telecoms, says that another area that must be addressed for Vans to make progress in opening the market is that of carrier pre-selection – the process of allowing the client to choose what types of calls are delivered by which operator.
For example, a client could choose to send all local calls via Telkom, national calls via Neotel and international calls via a cheaper alternative operator. While it's currently possible to achieve that with least cost routing systems, those tie the customer to a single service provider while carrier pre-selection would create a system inside the formalised telecoms infrastructure that would let clients make that choice.
By enabling that technology – which is widespread internationally – telecoms users would be able to quickly and efficiently switch between operators without having to buy expensive hardware to enable that.
Clearly, there are a number of challenges ahead for SA's alternative telecoms operators. However, should regulator Icasa move quickly to open a few key areas, the market could move rapidly towards a fully open telecoms environment.
Finweek
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