Johannesburg, 25 Aug 2010
Converged telecoms provider ECN has rolled out a fully managed teleconferencing service that facilitates communication on its next-generation network.
According to the telco, its Virtual Boardroom service enables businesses and private individuals to conduct telephonic voice conferences without deploying additional costly infrastructure or paying monthly subscriptions for the service.
Andy Openshaw, ECN director for sales and marketing, says the local market is ready for this service due to falling telecommunications costs and lack of cost-effective, next-generation teleconferencing options.
“The market is now ripe for this teleconferencing service. We decided to create this service to make it easier and more efficient for people to make conference calls whether it's in a business setting or for making social calls,” says Openshaw.
“We've spent the last number of years building a corporate customer base, and now we are expanding our services to offer businesses and individuals an alternative to less expensive voice conferencing.”
He points out that under the Virtual Boardroom service, users can make two types of voice conferencing calls. The first type of call is the general meeting service which is an easy-to-use service and is suited to informal social calls.
The second type is the moderated meeting service, where a moderator has full control over the teleconference and needs to register beforehand on ECN's Web site. This service enables the moderator to record calls, lock the teleconference, do a roll call and mute or remove a user from the teleconference.
Openshaw notes that for a user to participate in the conference call, they simply need to dial the Virtual Boardroom service number and the facility is available and free to use. The callers are charged normal rates for the cost of the call by their telco service provider.
“Customers of the service do not need to purchase any additional hardware. People can call in from any phone whether it's a fixed-line or on their cellphone. Anybody can use it, even if they are not an ECN customer,” says Openshaw.
This is one many moves made by the telco this year to boost competitive pricing against incumbents. Earlier this year, ECN was the first in its class of companies to test, run and complete the process of porting a Telkom geographic number.
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