WhichVoIP.co.za launches online Business VoIP Quotation Facility

Johannesburg, South Africa 30 March 2011 – www.WhichVoIP.co.za has further positioned itself as the leading Repository, Comparison and Reporting website for all things VoIP in South Africa by launching a Business VoIP Quotation facility that helps companies connect with Business VoIP Providers. The new Quotation Facility is simple, quick and most importantly; easy to use.

Voice over IP has become a viable option for all businesses and not just for large organisations. In fact, most Businesses in South Africa make up the SMB market – and in todays economy, this is where each Cent really counts toward the bottom line."

This new facility has significantly helped us address the growing need that companies have to re-evaluate their telecom costs, by allowing them to get connected with reliable, trustworthy and high quality VoIP service providers." Says Mitchell Barker, founder of www.WhichVoIP.co.za

"More and more businesses are considering switching to business VoIP phone service from their regular landlines but are faced with the uncertainty of a new technology.  Our goal is to help people and businesses through the investigation process offering pertinent information related to the VoIP, and then the Commercial factors, which forms part of our Extensive Research Reports. Once our users have been through the investigation and evaluation process, we close the loop by putting these businesses in touch with the right people to make sure that there is follow-through with their project,” says Barker.

Businesses can take the first step towards major telecom cost savings by accessing the VoIP site at http://www.whichvoip.co.za. It is then easy to navigate through the providers and quote tool, with most users easily completing the process in under a minute.

Additional Functionality

WhichVoIP.co.za offers users the ability to purchase Research Reports, Compare VoIP Providers, Learn about the Technology, Query a VoIP provider by inserting the VoIP number, Sourcing a credible VoIP Associate through the National Directory, Collaborating with other Members in a Focused Forum, Staying in touch with VoIP News specific to South Africa; searchable by Provider, download Articles, read Interesting Blogs, and much more.

About

WhichVoIP.co.za is South Africa’s #1 Online VoIP Research and Reporting website which provides a central view of VoIP Telecoms Operators aims to take the Guess-work out of all the VoIP services and packages on offer in the Market.

WhichVoIP.co.za will not only keep companies who are investigating the technology informed prior to negotiation, but will also help providers and partners benchmark their services, align contracts, and truly be able to advise and offer their customers the best service suited to their business.

The best and worst telecoms operators in SA

A basic analysis of feedback on HelloPeter reveals which telecoms providers attract the most compliments and complaints from subscribers - Rudolph Muller, MyBroadband.


HelloPeter has become South Africa’s most popular destination for consumers wanting to lodge complaints about companies from which they received poor service.

According to the HelloPeter website 42,895 complaints were lodged by South African consumers over the last 90 days, bearing testimony to the popularity of the consumer website.

Unsurprisingly complaints significantly outnumber compliments, but to try to establish an objective measure of the service levels of a company HelloPeter provides visitors with league tables which include a compliments/complaints ratio.

This ratio indicates which percentage of feedback received is positive, giving a loose indication of the service levels of a company.

The following table provides an overview of the compliments/complaints ratio of South Africa’s
telecoms operators over the last twelve months.

Compliments/Compliments Ratio (larger is better)
	Complaints	Compliments	Compliments/Complaints Ratio (%)
Virgin Mobile	2341	318	13.6
Neotel	583	79	13.6
Vodacom	7494	1002	13.4
Cell C	5960	667	11.2
MTN	7668	756	9.9
Telkom	1733	161	9.3
iBurst	487	19	3.9

While a compliments/complaints ratio may be a fair way to measure service levels, a better way may be to measure the number of complaints per 1,000 customers received over the last twelve months. The following table does exactly that for the country’s largest telecoms companies.

Since HelloPeter is essentially a website where people complain about poor service, it makes sense to see how many complaints a certain company received when compared to their customer base.

It should be noted that the subscriber numbers listed below is based on the last publicly available figures.

Complaints per 1000 customers (lower is better)
	Complaints	Customers	Complaints/1000 Customers
Vodacom	7494	25,300,000	0.30
Telkom	1733	4,300,000	0.40
MTN	7668	18,800,000	0.41
Cell C	5960	7,000,000	0.85
iBurst	487	70,000	6.96
Virgin Mobile	2341	300,000	7.80
Neotel	583	50,000	11.66

Its all change for Telecoms

It's adapt or die for SA's alternative telecoms network providers, as a wave of consolidation will hit the market in the next two years.

A shift towards converged offerings will see smaller players being gobbled up by large telcos, or close their doors, as companies battle it out for bigger client bases and access to IP-based infrastructure.
Smaller companies will be bought out, or disappear into obscurity, as the sector goes through its most dramatic change since the launch of the mobile operators.

Companies and consumers will be the ultimate winners as communication costs will be pushed down.
Reunert has already made the first move, buying ECN Telecommunications for an undisclosed amount, to bolster its aim of being a converged player in the next 18 months.

ECN CEO John Holdsworth says a wave of consolidation is coming within the next two years as voice and data – as well as fixed and mobile – offerings start converging.
Holdsworth says the market will become increasingly competitive, which will lead to consolidation as operators seek to grow market share and quickly reduce costs in an increasingly saturated market.

The only way to grow market share, says Holdsworth, is through takeovers, mergers and co-operation. “Dominant operators with a strong financial base will be able to acquire additional market share and technology.”

Holdsworth says smaller operators that do not have the necessary scale to compete with the larger companies are likely to either disappear or be bought out. Larger players with strong balance sheets – such as Telkom, Dimension Data, MTN, Vodacom and. Reunert – will be the “ultimate winners”, he believes.

Extreme surfing

Nashua Mobile CEO Andy Baker adds the wave of consolidation is “inevitable” and is being driven by a need for operators to have critical mass. Firms that only offer one product, such as least-cost routing, will be “in trouble”.

The result will be a sector dominated by a handful of large players, notes Baker. “The rate of change in the telecoms arena will be more extreme than in the last 10 to 15 years. We are entering a phase of massive, massive change.”

The shift towards convergence will lead to cheaper communications, and costs will come down by double digits for large companies, says Baker. This price reduction will inevitably spill over into the consumer market, he adds. “The savings can be material.”

Likely targets

Huge Group CEO James Herbst says Reunert's buyout of ECN will heighten the desire to be pre-emptive rather than reactive during the consolidation phase. “Reunert is one of many that will come, especially in the voice sector.”

Traditional least-cost routing and voice over IP companies will be targeted for buyout, says Herbst. Telcos want to buy up client bases, he explains, and it's cheaper to buy than to build. “Our businesses have value because of our clients.”

Smaller players like Vox and Huge are undervalued at the moment when considering their underlying assets and client base, comments Herbst. Buying out these companies will add massive value to cellular companies as they can strip out the overhead costs, he explains.

With the move to convergence, companies must “adapt or die” and smaller players will either be gobbled up, or slowly disappear, says Herbst. Mobile operators and companies like Altech Autopage and Nashua Mobile are “perfect buyers”, he adds.

Richard Hurst, senior analyst of emerging markets at Ovum, says many smaller alternative network providers are “positioning themselves to be gobbled up”. He says companies such as Vox and Huge Group will be snatched up by large network operators such as Telkom and the mobile players.

Hurst says smaller companies will be bought out because of their revenue streams, and larger companies will want to take out some of the competition. He says without vast infrastructure and a large reach to consumer and corporate clients, smaller players won't “really be anywhere”.

As a result, says Hurst, SA will end up with about four or five large companies controlling the telecoms sector and smaller players will find it difficult to compete.

-ITWeb

8 Things You Can’t Do With VoIP

If you’ve been considering switching your phone service to a voice over IP service provider, you have undoubtedly heard all the different things you can accomplish with a VoIP connection. What you may not have heard is what you CAN’T do with a VoIP. In spite of all the advantages, there are a few things that still cannot be accomplished through VoIP.

1. Talk without an internet connection. IP stands for Internet Protocol. So, you must have an internet connection in order to use the VoIP phone services. Therefore, even if the phone service itself were totally free, you still have the cost of the internet connection. In addition, if your internet service goes down for any reason, you have also lost your VoIP phone service as well.
2. Talk when the power is out. You need electrical power to run your computer and you need it to power your router. When you lose power in your home and a VoIP phone is the only phone you have, your phone service will be out until your power is restored.
3. Use your standard analog phone without additional hardware. VoIP does not operate through your regular phone lines. Therefore, to use a standard analog phone with a VoIP service you must have a converter that connects your phone set to your computer. This is accomplished in a variety of ways, depending on your provider, but the additional hardware cannot be avoided.
4. Connect to a traditional fax machine. Actually this can be done, it just isn’t very effective and could cause you plenty of frustration as you attempt to send a fax through your VoIP connection. The issue involves the different type of data that a typical fax machine is trying to send and the difficulty in converting that data to a digital format. Scanning documents and saving them as pdf files for transmission is a better option.
5. Call anywhere in the world for free. If you have gotten the impression from some of the VoIP advertising that you can call anywhere in the world for free, you are mistaken. It is true that most of these services do provide international calling as part of their service package. However, each of the service providers delivers service to only a limited number of countries and not every country in the world.
6. Quickly switch your business phone system to VoIP. Business phone systems can be converted to VoIP systems to save money just like residential phones can be. Doing it quickly and simply may not be an accurate description though. Your current phone system and internal computer network would need to be analyzed to determine what all would be needed to make the conversion. What you currently have in place would make a big difference on just how complicated or uncomplicated the conversion would be.
7. Use VoIP with a dialup connection. This would defeat the whole purpose of a VoIP connection. The point of a VoIP connection is to eliminate the cost of a phone line. You can’t do that if your internet is accessed through a dialup connection. In addition the bandwidth provided through a dialup connection is not adequate for the needs of a VoIP service.
8. Control the weather. Even with the list above, it is easy to see that there aren’t many things that Voice over IP services can’t do. They are definitely quickly replacing traditional phone service providers. There was hope that they would be the answer to all problems, including inclement weather, however that has not been the case. Mother Nature remains on the loose.

Not all VoIP services are the same, so you must compare closely before making a choice and keep in mind the list above. There are a few disadvantages to a VoIP phone services, but most of those issues can be worked around with a little thought and planning.

- Copyright © myISPFinder.com all rights reserved

Not all VOIP providers are created equal

The drop in interconnect rates and the subsequent demise of the traditional least cost routing (LCR) model is making voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Internet telephony an even more attractive proposition for businesses due to all the benefits this technology has to offer.

These include reduced telecommunication costs, as the technology allows businesses to reduce infrastructure requirements and call costs over IP networks.

This technology also gives businesses the ability to adopt a converged communications infrastructure, which paves the way for the provisioning of voice, data and video services over the Internet, all of which can be managed in a consistent and measurable manner from a single service provider.

However, Wayne Speechly, Business Development Manager; Communication Services at Internet Solutions, advises businesses to carefully consider which VOIP provider they choose to partner with. “VOIP offerings are not yet commoditised, which means there are vast differences in the quality and reliability of these services in the market, and Internet telephony solutions do not always meet the criteria required of business-critical communication services,” he explains.

“For many people, their only VOIP experience to date has been a voice or video call over Skype. However, this type of Internet calling is a 'best effort' service, which means there are no guarantees made on the quality of service or reliability of the call, which is not acceptable for business use.”

In order for businesses to benefit from the full value that VOIP services can offer, there needs to be service level agreements (SLA) linked to the quality of service of calls being terminated and the infrastructure of a network, says Speechly. “Guaranteeing network quality is a simple proposition for most service providers, but the real value lies in a service provider's ability to guarantee both on-net and off-net call quality.

In this instance, the ability to measure and report on every call, along with the uptime and performance of the network, is something that most VOIP providers cannot offer. These are the key differentiators that businesses should consider before selecting a VOIP service provider.”

According to Speechly, to deliver real VOIP, service providers need to have an appropriate carrier grade national network, as well as a number of points of presence (POPs) and interconnects. “As this service is delivered over typical IT infrastructure, it can fail, so you need sufficient interconnects to ensure availability and reliability to off-net destinations. This is important because over 90% of the call destinations are to the main incumbents. Having sufficient POPs on a national basis means that the call can connect with other providers and services in different regions more efficiently, as the number of hops it takes to terminate the call is minimised. This also means that the service provider doesn't need to carry a call unnecessarily across the country, which incurs added costs and degrades quality, as they have the most optimal geographical routing.

“There is also a need for adequate redundancy and availability on a carrier grade network to ensure the reliability of the service,” he continues, “and this carrier grade network should include a class four switch that gives the service provider the ability to route calls between customers and the destination network, be it on- or off-net, with appropriate functionality.” The architecture must also be capable of seamlessly integrating with both traditional and new-age technology capabilities. “Most of the incumbent operators don't employ the latest technology due to the fact that they have sunken investments in their existing infrastructure and need to continue to sweat these assets until they are fully written off.

“However, the growing number of new entrants into the market, who are rolling out greenfield, next-generation networks that utilise the latest technology, will ensure better quality and integration when connecting VOIP calls.”

The fact that VOIP calls are terminated across an IP network means they are also exposed to the same risks as packet data. “A network is only as good as its weakest link, so the next important element when choosing a provider is ensuring they have adequate security around their network,” explains Speechly.

“A service provider needs to secure the edge of the network and also guard against potential hacks from within, as these breaches can compromise the network infrastructure, degrade the service and impact the quality of the calls being routed across the network. It is also important to ensure that other customers don't jeopardise the quality of the experience for anyone else on the network.”

According to Speechly, the last key element that should differentiate VOIP providers is their ability to provide telco grade billing via an appropriate engine. “The ability to accurately cost and bill all calls, so that the customer can get meaningful information around their usage and spend is an essential element for business and enterprise VOIP services,” he says. “The telecommunications industry is renowned for inconsistent and inaccurate billing practices and has often exploited businesses and consumers.

“So, following the changes in the LCR market, the industry can expect competitive and possibly more aggressive price cutting on voice services, as LCR providers left out in the cold due to the changing interconnect environment augment VOIP services into their offerings.” he continues. “However, market penetration through price cutting is normally associated with sacrificed quality. As such, any business looking to enhance their corporate voice calling capabilities, increase efficiency and reduce costs by adopting VOIP services needs to be cognisant of these facts. They should also ensure that they partner with a provider who is able to effectively build out their IP infrastructure to incorporate the value added services, like unified communications and hosted voice services, that naturally follow the successful implementation and use of enterprise-ready VOIP calling,” concludes Speechly.

- ITWeb