South African businesses will see their telephony bills drop by 30% over the next two years, says Vox Orion MD Jacques du Toit – and they should use their savings wisely by investing in new capacity and applications.
“Lower interconnect rates mean everyone is paying less for their phone calls,” says Du Toit. “By March 2013 Vox Orion customers will be paying 30% less than the current prices. Data costs will be dropping at the same time.” ICASA- mandated interconnect rates have recently dropped from 89c to 73c per minute, with further drops to 56c and then 40c in the next two years.
However, urges Du Toit, “Don’t just bank the cash. Rather get 30% more value out of the same spend.”
Du Toit says he expects the drop in voice tariffs as a result of lower interconnect fees to have the same effect as the drops in broadband data prices over the past few years. “Everyone is getting much more value for their money now,” he says. “We’ve gone from using maybe 2Gb of data a month to 5Gb to 10Gb to uncapped services, all at the same price. The same will happen with voice – people will either get more minutes for their money, or take advantage of other services.”
Video conferencing is one service Du Toit expects to see increasing demand for, along with mobile data collaboration and voice logging and recording services. “All of these have the potential to greatly increase productivity,” he says; “and by offsetting the cost against reduced call rates, customers will effectively be getting them for nothing.”