{"id":163,"date":"2007-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-11-14T14:46:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T12:46:44","slug":"telkom-s-new-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/163-telkom-s-new-enemy.html","title":{"rendered":"Telkom&#8217;s new enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">A costly new threat to Telkom, the listed monopoly that South Africans love to hate, is set to rapidly take root in the corporate world.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is being implemented to replace traditional telephone systems, at Mr Price, with millions of rands of costs&#8217; savings expected in the next five years.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">This emerged on the <em>Moneyweb Power Hour <\/em>on Thursday when host Alec Hogg quizzed Stewart Cohen, joint chairman of the Mr Price Group, on the company&#8217;s financials.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Cohen said Mr Price expects to save R20m to R50m a year by implementing VoIP technology.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The move will increase costs in the first year, because there will be duplications in the system.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">After that, it is expected to cut costs to the extent that the move will add &#8220;a few cents to the company&#8217;s earnings&#8221;, observed market commentator Evan Walker of RMB Asset Management.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">VoIP is expected to become popular over the next few years as other companies follow suit, and this development could be &#8220;a bit worrying&#8221; for Telkom shareholders, <em>Moneyweb Power Hour<\/em> listeners heard.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">However, Walker said it may not be bad news for Telkom, though shareholders have &#8220;got to hope that volumes come through on the Telkom side, and people use it more&#8221;. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=76974\">Comments<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><em>Moneyweb<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A costly new threat to the monopoly South Africans love to hate is taking root in the corporate world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}