IP telephony matures

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 26 Mar 2009

The economic crisis and open source technology are driving the development of IP telephony, according to Chris Wortt, VOIP sales manager for Polycom.

Wortt is in SA to visit Zycko, Polycom's South African distributor. He says open source standards are creating new opportunities where applications can be integrated into the handset. “As economic times change, what we are seeing is a realisation from service providers, such as the telco giants MTN and Vodacom, and companies such as Verizon, extending services with more capability. We are now starting to see the maturity of the IP telephony market improve.”

Wortt says the South African IP market is maturing, but still has a long way to go when compared to the IP market in Europe and the US. The global economic crisis is creating a growing trend, where the smaller developers, struggling to keep up with demands, are being absorbed by the larger players.

“A lot of organisations have been left with a very bitter taste of what VOIP is. Businesses would experience their lines dropping, poor quality voice calls, and the maturity wasn't there. Another misconception is that VOIP is perceived as being free. And the reality is it's not. Businesses need to apply a significant amount of investment to run their own gateways and IP PBX. The key to IP telephony is to deliver a quality of service at granular telephony functionality in a very managed and business-like way, with high-speed reliable bandwidth.”

Bandwidth hungry tech

Wortt points out that bandwidth capacity and network reliability remains a challenge in the market. However, he predicts this will change once Seacom's undersea fibre optic cables are implemented in June this year.

The biggest benefit in IP telephony, especially amid an economic downturn, is that it reduces travel time and saves money, as more companies are adopting customised videoconferencing technologies, Wortt says. Last year November, Vodacom partnered with distributor Kathea to install Polycom high-definition telepresence conference rooms at Vodacom's headquarters in Midrand and Cape Town.

Polycom's sales in the fourth quarter last year remained flat, however, the opportunity and activity in the market has accelerated, he notes. “The opportunity is significantly bigger than it was in 2008 across the board. In some markets, IT investments in IP telephony is increasing, as well as investment in high-speed broadband and Gigabit Ethernet demand increases with the amount of users. The biggest opportunities we are seeing are with tier-one service providers such as MTN and Verizon.”