The biggest impact deregulation will have in SA will be on the price of telecommunications services, says Neil Macdonald, chairman of Hymax Telecoms. Macdonald was MD at Symphony Telecom when the UK industry deregulated in 1998.
"In the short-term, deregulation will provide significantly cheaper calls for business and the choice of services and providers will be much larger than at present," says Macdonald.
"Of course, this carries its own risks and clients need to ensure they deal with reputable suppliers, who must be reliable, have knowledge of the technologies needed and have the ability to support and service the client`s needs."
He believes that rolling out voice over IP (VOIP) in an organisation can also present its own set of problems, as in most cases, the existing infrastructure will have to be upgraded for additional bandwidth to cater for voice traffic and to ensure quality of service on that traffic.
"Another key feature of deregulation is the basket of telecoms offerings clients will be able to get from key suppliers. No longer will they be required to buy a PABX from one supplier, get bandwidth from another and perhaps routing facilities from a third," he says.
"Clients will soon be able to secure a total telecoms solution from one supplier, which will also mean a single interface and one monthly bill. This is the role Hymax has positioned itself to fill."
Macdonald says Hymax has spent the past nine months restructuring, researching and developing software and hardware solutions in order to capitalise on the opportunities in the local market.
"We have introduced a range of new products and services, including VOIP and IP telephony, as well as value-added services like least-cost routing (LCR) and international dialling facilities, and our latest offering, which is called managed voice services (MVS).
"MVS can cut corporate telecoms spend by as much as 40%, as it captures all call information, evaluates it, identifies re-routing opportunities, finds the cheapest call rate across all service providers and can also report back on risks and opportunities by individual, branch or by product - all on a single page."
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