The end of the land line?

Those statistics show that Telkom's fixed access lines currently stand at 3,894,000, which is down from 3 995 000 in March 2012, and down 4.4% from a year before in September 2011, when it was at 4,073 000. Rather alarmingly for the operator, the company's interim results for the six months ending on 30 September, 2012, show that every segment of its fixed-line business has declined, including post-paid public switched telephone network (PSTN) and ISDN lines.

There are several explanations as to why South African users are defecting from land lines. Although Telkom still owns the majority of the fixed-line infrastructure in South Africa - which reportedly consists of a national long-haul network of lines spanning approximately 143,000 kilometres - it is ageing and, due to still being mostly copper-based, prone to theft and, therefore, disruptive to the day-to-day operations of businesses, leading to a loss of income and costing South Africa about R5 billion per year.

VoIP embraced

Due to this, business owners are embracing other options to meet their companies' telecommunications needs, including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), because it is more affordable and provides users with more freedom. Reliable connectivity services are of growing importance as the way employees work changes dramatically. Operating numerous, separate networks for voice, data, video and other applications is not an innovative approach towards an effective communications infrastructure. Each has unique requirements for bandwidth, latency and availability, and often the optimal architecture for linking all of these incorporates a range of services.

However, there is a multitude of connectivity services and offerings on the market, making it difficult for companies to choose the optimal service and bandwidth to support application requirements while minimising costs. www.whichvoip.co.za has, therefore, introduced a new wireless provider comparison section to help businesses make an informed decision. Together with the existing VoIP and PBX comparison sections, www.whichvoip.co.za provides a quick-and-easy reference for companies evaluating all of the options available to them.

Connectivity requirements vary, from a small office needing nothing more than Internet connectivity for email and web access to a bigger and more diversified company that require many components that differ sites by bandwidth and resiliency requirements. Wireless connectivity is the ideal solution for many companies and we have provided a way for them to evaluate which provider will best meet their needs at a glance.