Storm's foray into voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services has been successful despite the lack of interconnection with Telkom and some technical issues, says the second tier telecommunications provider.
The company started offering its VOIP service a year ago when the September 2004 ministerial determination came into effect, lifting the ban on offering such services.
Storm's offering was designed around installing customer premise equipment and managing the bandwidth costs, leaving the customer only paying for minutes used. The service uses Telkom's Diginet lines for connection.
Tim Parsonson, Storm's joint-CEO, says his company has installed 150 sites, representing about 80 businesses, and with about 31 000 individuals using the service daily.
"I believe that if we could install the current backlog we have, we could actually increase our revenue from this service by 50%."
Parsonson says there are two problems from a customer perspective: firstly, local calls are not really viable, because of the quality of service issues, and, secondly, customers still need to use Telkom for their inbound calls.
"The second issue really seems to annoy our customers, because one of the reasons they come to us is so they don't have to deal with Telkom," he says.
Interconnection, the ability to transmit a call across a number of telecommunications networks, is a big problem for companies such as Storm, because Telkom is able to stall or refuse such connections. However, Parsonson believes Telkom's ability to continue to do so is diminishing.
"As far as we are concerned, the ministerial determination makes it clear that interconnection should happen and once the new Electronic Communications Bill comes into law, then Telkom will have no choice," he says.
Storm has been allocated a number range by the Independent Communications Authority of SA. However, it has not issued any to clients yet.
"To issue numbers would just be a publicity exercise, because those numbers would not be viable for incoming calls," he says.
Parsonson believes the demand for VOIP will grow exponentially. "The demand for data services by companies is huge and VOIP is really just another form of data."
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