Johannesburg, 13 Feb 2007
Two years after voice over IP (VOIP) was legalised in South Africa, most of the benefits have gone to companies - but consumers stand to get their turn early in 2007, when VoxTelecom plans to roll-out a suite of commercial telephony services for consumers, at Telkom-busting prices.
Services to be introduced include call forwarding and follow-me, multiple numbers for the same line and a single phone number regardless of location.
"There are lots of value-added telephony services that were previously only available to companies with a PABX system, or via Telkom at substantial extra cost," explains VoxTelecom MD, Jaco Voigt.
"The legalisation of VOIP, and our recent interconnection agreement with Telkom, means we can offer individual consumers the same services we're offering to our corporate customers."
Telkom and Neotel still have exclusive rights to offer landline telephone services, which means VoxTelecom won't be able to come and install telephones at people's homes - but it can, thanks to its agreement to share call traffic with Telkom, offer the full range of value-added services.
"A lot of people have grown used to the convenience of follow-me and call forwarding at work and would love to have the same services at home," says Voigt. "Because VOIP uses the same technology as the Internet, which doesn't care from a cost point of view whether traffic is crossing oceans or just crossing town, we're able to offer those services at incredibly competitive prices, regardless of where people are."
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