2005-11-07 - VoIP to hit SA business first
[Johannesburg, 4 November 2005] - South African businesses will catch up with the fast-moving world and switch to mainstream voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) in five to eight years, and the 'mass population' will follow three years later, says Raymond Janse van Rensburg, systems engineering manager, Cisco Systems, SA.
He was speaking at VoiceComm 2005 in Johannesburg yesterday.
Western Europe has started its integration and will function solely on broadband in the next three to five years, said Andrew Border, Cisco Systems senior manager IPC.
SA will take longer to catch up with this trend as it needs to get past the issues of broadband deregulation and access to devices, he said.
Besides deregulation, a competitor push is needed to spear the fixed-line monopoly into the VOIP development arena, said Richard Dodsworth, business development manager, Voice Technology Group, Cisco Systems, Asia-Pacific.
Cisco's representatives agree that the plan is to work with SA's fixed-line telecommunications operator rather than replace it, in order to “make it a part of the applications suite rather than just plumbing,” said Dodsworth.
The three agree that as a developing technology, SA is “going through the natural progression of deregulation” as is the case with India.
ITWeb
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