Storm, the low cost voice and data service provider for the African market, is giving a substantial boost to the South African economy through its International Toll-Free Service (ITFS), helping establish the country as a major player in the global call centre market.
Storm is currently providing a range of innovative voice and data services to call centres based in Cape Town and Johannesburg. A key component to these services is ITFS, storm's ability to provide a series of toll-free numbers in over 60 countries worldwide. This offers savings of around 40% when compared to the traditional method of creating such a facility, which required individual agreements to be signed with multiple global operators.
Tim Wyatt-Gunning, Managing Director of storm, says: "SA is now ideally positioned to be a serious player in the global call centre market. It's in the same time zone as Europe and there's a large, professional workforce who can speak a host of languages including English, German and Dutch. What's more, as a result of deregulation, we have become the first South African company to establish a reliable, high quality, global network of toll-free numbers."
One company already taking advantage of storm's ITFS service is AquaOnline, a leading call centre in Johannesburg for the online casino industry. Servicing some of the world's leading online casinos, AquaOnline has to be able to deliver world-class day-to-day care for a highly demanding client customer-base 24 hours a day, seven days a week globally.
Howard Feinberg of AquaOnline says: "Deregulation of telecommunications in SA has seen bandwidth increase, costs fall and innovative products such as storm's ITFS become available. As a direct result of storm's services, we have been able to relocate our global call centre operation from Europe to SA where we now employ a team of 20 agents to take toll-free calls from 51 countries across the globe."
Currently AquaOnline handles over 3 000 customer enquiries a month from 12 countries via storm's network.
Share
Storm is the South African retail brand for STWS, a leading low-cost voice and data service provider for the African market. Focusing exclusively on the needs of business users, storm was launched in Cape Town in June 1999. Storm's goal is to challenge the major players in the telecoms market by consistently providing innovative voice and data products and services that help companies to communicate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Storm currently provides over 4 000 South African businesses with a range of high quality voice and data communication services including storm international, storm cellular, storm access, storm fax and storm sms. Storm international lowers the cost of a business's international calls through its latest callback technology. Storm cellular and storm fax reduce the cost of calls to cellular phones and the sending of faxes. With STWS's acquisition of ITI's ISP business in 2000, Storm offers Internet connectivity, which includes domain name registration, Web site design and server hosting services. Furthermore, Storm is positioning itself to offer converged voice and data services on one network, once deregulation of the local telecommunications market takes place.
Owning and managing its own network, storm will continue to differentiate itself in the South African market by providing value-added services such as its newly launched Customer Zone and VOIP (once legalised).
Editorial contacts