Corporate SA is waking up to the advantages of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), says Tim Parsonson, co-founder of Internet service provider Storm.
WHAT IT MEANS
 Small businesses can also benefit
Companies can save 60%-70% on calls |
Tired of the high cost of telephony, they are increasingly turning to VoIP to reduce their overheads.
Storm has become one of the leading players in VoIP for large businesses since it was legalised last year.
Parsonson says it has signed up about 300 of SA's largest companies, which should enable them to save 60%-70% on Internet calls.
The service Storm offers is different from those provided by Skype. Unlike Skype, it does not use the Internet to provide its service, it piggybacks off companies' data network infrastructures.
This allows companies to bypass Telkom's network when keeping in touch with their branches around the country. All calls within the company become internal calls.
Using companies' networks instead of the Internet has several advantages. The quality of the call is better, the service is more reliable and the service can be integrated into a telecom operator's network.
Storm is not alone in catering to the growing VoIP corporate market.
Verizon Business SA is doing proof-of-concept projects with customers and would like to become a fully fledged VoIP provider.
And it's not only big companies that are enjoying the benefits of VoIP. MWeb Business has launched a service called OfficeCall that caters to small to medium-sized businesses. MWeb is the first service provider in SA to offer an Internet call service as a standard part of its ADSL subscription package.
Small businesses can save up to 35% on local cellular calls, 12% on national calls and up to 60% on international calls. Interbranch calls and calls within the MWeb Business VoIP community are free.
Elia Tsouros, Verizon business development executive, one of the biggest challenges companies face when adopting VoIP is integrating it into their existing telecom systems. He says the changes to the system may be simple but a thorough examination is necessary. It can take up to a month of testing and monitoring to ascertain whether any changes needs to be made.
Tsouros says VoIP might not be suitable for all companies. Companies must ask: "Is it worth while?", before committing themselves. If companies want to achieve economies of scale and added returns on their investments in data infrastructure, then VoIP can work well for them.
But Tsouros does not think VoIP will benefit companies that make many local calls and are not dependent on their own data networks.
Vox Telecom MD Jaco Voigt says the biggest challenge facing VoIP providers is their ability to interconnect with traditional telecom operators. "Interconnection is key. All the other stuff is peripheral and noise," he says.
Voigt says progress has been made on interconnection, but it is not easy for an operator such as Telkom, which has up to 200 VoIP service providers wanting to interconnect with it.
He is happy with the way telecom operators have embraced the need to interconnect. He says Telkom, in particular, has been keen to connect with VoIP service provides.
There is much hype about VoIP at present, but not everything is as it seems, says Orion Telecom MD Jacques du Toit.
He urges companies to visit service providers' premises to see if they have the capacity to deliver a service that offers 24/7 uptime. The consequences of using a service provider that cannot guarantee around-the-clock service can be dire, Du Toit warns.
VoIP-enabled networks handle both voice and data, so network downtime can be complex to manage. Data does not have to be in real-time, but voice does, so companies could be left with no way to communicate if the system fails.
Voigt also urges caution when it comes to picking a VoIP provider. "There is a perception that it is going to be a big money spinner," he says.
