Icasa's draft regulations important for competition

The Huge Group's Executive Chairman, Anton Potgieter, feels that the new draft regulations proposed by Icasa regarding carrier pre-select are an important step which the local telecommunications industry needs to take in order to facilitate real competition in the market. His view is shared by many in the industry who agree that a consumer's ability to choose their telecommunications carrier call-for-call, regardless of their normal provider, will have a huge impact on the level of competition in the industry.

“Essentially what carrier pre-select means,” explains Potgieter, “is that an individual, or a company, can use their existing telecoms infrastructure, but have their calls carried by another provider - usually at much cheaper rates. This is done by dialling a prefix code before dialling your destination number. Internationally we've seen this type of ruling significantly stimulate competition, with the larger players in the market competing vigorously for voice traffic by using creative pricing structures to attract customers.”

Unfortunately for consumers, corporate and individual alike, at the height of competition, the sheer number of routing options available will make it incredibly difficult to assess all the options and they may resign themselves to just using their regular provider for the sake of simplicity. “However,” says Potgieter, “increased competition, more routing options and creative pricing models are a gold mine for those willing to brave the telecoms jungle. Companies can save a great deal of money by properly evaluating the routing options available to them and ensuring each call they make is placed on the most cost-effective route.”

“It will not make sense for consumers to stick to one service provider. Where it is cheaper to route via another network, this should be taken advantage of,” he says. “And, given the complexity involved with the growing number of routing options available, standard PABX equipment is not sufficient to properly route calls over the available carriers, especially if call-rates by providers change at the drop of a hat. Companies' core-competencies also do not readily extend into evaluating routing options and so advanced telecommunications management is often an area best outsourced to those who specialise in this field.”

Providers who specialise in perfectly managing a company's telecommunications spend need to be able to change routing patterns remotely in real-time and put together complex routing tables allowing their clients to take advantage of the best call prices at any given time. “In the UK, carriers offered specials on certain call types for a limited period. If you're a cost-conscious company, you want to be able to automatically take advantage of these specials and make the most of your telecommunications budget,” says Potgieter. “With our routing equipment and monitoring systems, we are able to change a customer's routing patterns at a moments notice, ensuring that we can take advantage of carrier specials and time-of-day pricing models and offer our customers the cheapest calls around,” he says.

Least cost routing in South Africa began more than a decade ago by efficiently routing expensive landline-to-mobile calls directly via the mobile networks themselves, cutting out interconnection fees and dramatically lowering the cost per call. Players such as Huge Telecom and others emerged to satisfy the desire of corporate South Africa to pay as little as possible for their telephone calls. With the new draft legislation by Icasa, it would seem that the services of such companies, who exist to supply their customers with the very best possible rate for their telephone calls, will be in great demand.