Vox targets growth

By Nicola Mawson, Contributing journalist

Johannesburg, 26 Jun 2009

Having grown through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions over the past five years, Vox Telecom is now bundling voice and data services, as well as innovating to help customers reduce their telecom spend during the economic crisis.

Chairman Tony van Marken says the company will offer converged solutions to help deliver savings and value to its customers, which includes 18 500 corporate customers and 150 000 consumers.

He says Vox is offering an alternate value proposition to customers who can choose to avoid the incumbent operator. Currently, Vox is not in an acquisitive mode, but is optimising its operations and getting maximum benefit from its network assets to benefit customers.

Last year, the company reported record revenues of R1.8 billion, an 87% increase on the previous year. It also grew operating profit by 64%, to R137 million, due to acquisitive and organic growth.

The company recently launched several innovations aimed at helping companies cut telecommunications costs. One is Fishbone, which is a line-bonding technology that allows companies to maximise their available bandwidth. Vox has the rights to expand this technology into Africa, says Van Marken.

Another is Eyeris, a video-conferencing solution that provides companies with an alternative to having to spend time and money travelling to meetings.

Ongoing innovation

Van Marken says the company has seen a good reception to both products with record sales in April and May. “Vox has always been an innovator in the telecom market and we are very focused on continuing to be a leader from a product perspective while ensuring we deliver tangible benefits to our customers.”

Telepreneur is another telephony offering introduced two years ago, which is marketed through a multi-level marketing methodology and saves people money for every call they receive. Van Marken says Vox is the first company to offer this to customers in SA.

However, there are challenges. Local number portability, which would aid Vox in expanding its voice business, has not yet happened, except for corporates who wish to port very large ranges of numbers, and carrier pre-select has also stalled.

“We are well positioned to further capitalise on full deregulation and we are optimistic that ICASA will drive the implementation of local number portability and carrier pre-select over the short term”, says Van Marken.