VoIP service in South Africa has not always been legal, let alone prevalent. Nonetheless, upon its legalization in early 2005, VoIP service in South Africa gradually began making its mark and continues to do so today. With only a couple of companies providing VoIP services during its first year of “life,” many projected that the demand for VoIP South Africa would increase tremendously by the end of 2005; in fact, an estimated 80% of South African companies were expected to acquire VoIP services for their business in the first year of legalization.

What is VoIP? Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that allows you to receive voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular, or analog, phone line.

With more South African companies investing in VoIP service technology, the more that surfacing research is able to prove the cost savings one can incur when transitioning from a regular phone system to VoIP services. Although monetary savings are always a good incentive for acquiring a service, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. After all, reliable service, ensuring that each business opportunity is exercised optimally, is more of importance, regardless of its cost. As a result, it is of value to review the key benefits VoIP South Africa technology provides: 1) real time communication operating in the “cloud,” thus eliminating hardware, 2) accessibility to a remote call center regardless of location (call center or at home), and 3) provides high-speed access to all work and customer information.

If you are starting to believe that your company can benefit from VoIP service in South Africa, you are probably right. As data supports, the message about VoIP South Africa has been clearly delivered; those who have no already acquired the service are now looking to find the best VoIP service provider in South Africa.

DOW Networks provides the best VoIP service in South Africa, granting your business access to voice over IP on your own PBX— and not another piece of hardware! We understand that this transition may be slightly intimidating for the traditional telephony disappears. However, we found that the shift to VoIP South Africa is quite effortless, only requiring a reconfiguration of your PBX to send calls to the IP address versus your landline or mobile telephone number. VoIP South Africa has become the ideal, cost effective alternative to the traditional telephony for VoIP service users in South Africa.

VoIP is rapidly gaining in popularity. Why would it be a good choice over a traditional phone system? Besides the clear-cut and well-document cost benefits, VoIP is steadily making up for any deficiencies in quality of service (QOS) between VoIP and traditional telephony.

Improved Voice Quality

Voice quality was one of the biggest issues for VoIP. Traditional phone lines typically offer excellent sound quality and do not suffer from some of the variety of issues that can come up for VoIP. However, while not always as consistent as traditional, VoIP offers good to excellent voice quality and many providers will guarantee excellent QOS.

Fewer Dropped Calls

Again, with traditional service dropped calls are extremely rare. While rare for VoIP as well, dropped call issues might be experienced during high volume times. As with voice quality, some VoIP providers will guarantee service.

Bandwidth Usage

Here VoIP comes out on top. IP telephony is very efficient in its use of bandwidth, while traditional services are inefficient.

As VoIP is steadily improving QOS and is continuing to maintain a much more appealing cost model (little to no maintenance costs/ much lower long distance rates/ other cost benefits) than traditional telephony solution, there are fewer reasons to stick with a traditional landline system.

VoIP solutions could be the best choice for the inbound call center looking to weather the current economic climate or smaller call centers that don’t have the resources for large capital infrastructure investments. Because hosted solutions are incredibly easy and fast to set up, an on-premise inbound call center could quickly make the transition to a hosted VoIP.

Hosted VoIP solutions do not require large start-up capital, less maintenance than on-premise solutions, and smaller in-house IT staff.  All that is needed to get started is a PC and a broadband internet connection. However, it is of critical importance to make sure your business calculates the bandwidth that is needed to effectively handle operations. Otherwise, your system could experience severe performance issues such as echo, jitter and latency.

Another benefit of hosted VoIP is the ability to allow agents to work remotely. This can offer your business great cost-savings and flexibility in staffing. In addition home-based agents tend to be happier, more productive, responsive and responsible employees. This helps to improve customer service and typically customer satisfaction as well.

Other key benefits of VoIP solutions include efficient management of inbound calls, improved call center performance, simplified inbound call center management and enhanced calling features, monitoring and reporting.

A hosted VoIP might not be the right choice for every inbound call center but the trend toward VoIP solutions seems to be increasing. As the market expands and the increased number of providers create more competition, hosted VoIP solutions should only increase in popularity, functionality and affordability.