Least cost routing (LCR) brought the promise of cheaper calls in a heavily regulated industry when there were no other players except Telkom.
This is according to Jaco Voigt, non-executive director of TeleMasters, who says LCR in a South African context offered customers a cheaper option to make calls to cellular numbers from landlines. This created the opportunity to implement LCR products that could offer cheaper routes to cellular networks, he elaborates.
The term least cost routing is often misused in the South African context, he says, as LCR as a concept is technology agnostic; it's the practice of routing calls via the most effective route available, Voigt explains.
In SA, the industry was built by focusing on cellular calls; the shortcoming of this is that only a specific portion of call traffic is addressed, Voigt emphasises. The technology used to offer the service was based on old technology, referred to as 'premi-cells', he says. This proved difficult to manage, and from a sales perspective, he continues, customers were left with unrealistic expectations regarding the levels of savings.
“For me, the ultimate goal is to offer customers greater control over their communications environment. This is based on a building block framework, which ensures that customers gain greater insight and control over their communication environment. Once they have control, they can implement strategies and policies that drive greater productivity and cost optimisation,” Voigt stresses.
Unified communications can work if business defines rules and policies that can be used to drive productivity, he says. The cheapest option is seldom the best option; for most companies, it is more important to be 10% more efficient than to save 20% on a small component of their total cost base, Voigt points out.
Voigt is a speaker at the ITWeb Business Communications forum, taking place on 22 November, at The Forum, in Bryanston.
To find out more about this event, click here.
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