The First African Voice Over IP (VOIP) Forum, held in Nairobi on 14 and 15 December, welcomed the regulatory changes introduced in several African countries to liberalise its use, and called on other African regulators to follow the example set by these pioneering countries.
The Forum claims that VOIP will be the key factor in driving down telephony costs and stimulating the growth of networks across the continent, which is why it is encouraging regulators to open up markets by licensing multiple international gateways to increase competition and multiply service offerings.
It also called on regulators in the region to review the current competition regimes in their countries to prevent operators with significant market power from stifling this new market in its infancy.
The Forum attracted a mixed group, including regulators, incumbents, potential new service operators and even grey market operators.
"Three years ago who would have thought that VOIP could be mentioned in public, let alone that we would be talking about the business implications of it?" said Brian Longwe, of the African ISP Association (AfrISPA).
Sammy Kirui, of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) said: "We have come from a regulatory environment that was - consciously or unconsciously - dictated by the protection of the incumbent`s revenue.
"This obsession, even though its revenues fell anyway, was like trying to hold on to an illogical scenario - if you have restrictive clauses in your licences, bring them to us and we will delete them."
According to Badru Ntege of Ugandan ISP One2Net, ISPs are currently in a "dead zone" in business terms, chasing low-value, static markets.
He believes that the Internet will soon constitute only half of African ISPs` business, with the remainder coming from voice-enabled services and multi-media consumer services.
The Forum also pointed out that increased deployment of IP networks, coupled with the growth of Internet Exchange Points in the region, would considerably enhance the retention of traffic within the continent and thus mitigate the costs of extra-continental transits.
This would contribute greatly to retention of revenues by African operators and service providers, thus promoting indigenous entrepreneurship and wealth.
It also noted that what is being seen at present is a market in transition.
The market is moving from a position where the incumbent had a vertical stranglehold over large parts of the market, to one where the now unprepared incumbents are beginning to look vulnerable for the first time.
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