Telkom to lose its grip on pricing, predicts handset firm

Speaking at a function hosted by Voice over IP (VoIP) consulting firm BizCall, a subsidiary of Alt-X listed Vox Telecom, Wortt said hosted services, even where they were using Telkom infrastructure, would increasingly be able to negotiate deals enabling them to offer high-quality services at prices that presented serious competition to Telkom.

"All over the world, service pricing is increasingly in the hands of competitors to the incumbent telecom companies," said Wortt. "Telkom is going to be driven to become more competitive; they'll have no alternative."

Wortt said South Africa was already one of the top five handset markets in the world in per capita terms and that Polycom, which is betting on open standards-based IP telephony as the technology of the future, was watching local developments with interest.

"In the EU, 36% of organisations now have some kind of IP call control and 47% plan to deploy it within the next 12 to 24 months," says Wortt. "Pure IP PABXs are set to overtake hybrids within two years, and hosted VoIP services are growing in parallel."

"Polycom doesn't manufacture or distribute any kind of call control," adds Wortt. "We are rather in the business of giving our customers the best choice of handset. That means we partner with a number of different suppliers, including BizCall in South Africa. BizCall's focus on open standards-based IP telephony is exactly in line with our strategy, and we've been very impressed by the innovative projects happening in this country."

Wortt stresses that the VoIP business case should not rest on price. "Cost reduction is just one element," he says. "Perhaps more importantly, IP telephony can increase productivity and return on assets as well as making your business more agile and future-proof. To realise those benefits takes some significant upfront investment, but the long-term payoffs are well worth it. Having just one, all-pervasive, highly resilient network to deliver all your business communications means you get higher return on your assets and just one supplier to deal with – in other words, just one butt to kick."

"IP telephony means you're also preparing your business to deliver a much richer communication environment to both employees and customers," adds Wortt. "It will ultimately be possible to migrate conversations between different media according to your needs, from simple instant messaging chats to full-fledged video contacts. As the generation that's grown up on the Internet starts moving into the workplace, they're going to drive demand for rich media communications."