TMCnews Featured Article

South Africa is poised for an explosion in enterprise VoIP adoption in 2015, according Louis Jardim of Turrito Networks.

That’s because networks have matured so that operators are finally in a position to offer enterprise-grade voice quality at affordable prices, he noted.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa also has lowered interconnect rates, which help lower VoIP prices and make it even more compelling.

Many customers were burned during the first wave of VoIP in South Africa because the market was full of many small operators that were delivering VoIP without any sort of service guarantees. That, predictably, led to poor quality.

As bandwidth prices have dropped and infrastructure has improved, however, high-quality VoIP now is widely available.

There are many reasons why businesses—in South Africa or elsewhere—should adopt VoIP for their enterprise calling needs.

First, VoIP can provide video conferencing and mobile support within the framework on an enterprise communications system. With employees regularly moving in and out of the office, the ability to take their business phone with them via their mobile device is a crucial selling point of VoIP. Mobility matters.

The use of VoIP also helps businesses reduce the burden of maintaining equipment, because in many cases VoIP is hosted in the cloud and maintained by the VoIP provider. This frees us businesses to focus on their core competencies.

Then there is the cost advantage, of course; since VoIP uses the Internet, it can share transmission lines instead of requiring a dedicated line like analogue phones do. This reduced resource use makes VoIP much less expensive than its TDM-based counterpart, and a large portion of those savings is handed back to the customer in the form of lower calling rate.

VoIP brings a bevy of features, too, since it is a digital technology.

Large enterprises have already made the jump to VoIP in many cases, but there’s still much room for growth when it comes to smaller firms. And for countries that have not always had the infrastructure in place, the move to VoIP is just starting to make sense.

Globally, 2015 could be a good one for VoIP.