Nashua Mobile seeks to 'aggressively' grow VoIP

Newly appointed Nashua Mobile CEO Andy Baker said that the company intended to aggressively grow its presence in the Voice over Internet Protocol market, as it was important for the company to gain traction, and become a significant player in the converged communications space.

Through its new ‘EasiVoice’ VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) offering for business, which it launched on Thursday, Nashua Mobile hoped to increase its earnings from voice by about 5% to 10% over time.

The company’s revenue

About 20% of the company’s revenue was currently derived from Least Cost Routing services, which was viewed as a significant portion of the business, generating some R1,2-billion a year.

Although the cost of calls on VoIP were expected to be cheaper for the customer, Nashua Mobile could increase earnings, as in-bound calls were but chargeable over VoIP, and not only out-bound calls.

The company

The company was hoping to convert about 75% of its existing LCR customer base to VoIP, and described the shift as a "natural evolution" from its existing business solutions product set.

Baker noted that there have been significant shifts in the telecommunications marketplace over the last 12 months in South Africa, and added that the battle in telecoms was however largely in the data space.

The VoIP market

The VoIP market was said to be increasing daily, and, during South Africa was behind international trends, there was a major drive to increase connectivity.

"With the uncertainty surrounding the regulation of mobile termination rates in South Africa, the time is ripe for businesses of all sizes to migrate onto VoIP solutions to achieve cost-savings in their telecoms environments," said Baker.

On-site maintenance was either managed by Nashua Mobile’s technicians or through the service provider’s network of about 80 dealers.

Min for local Telkom calls

Nashua Mobile said that call rates ranged from R0,28 a min for local Telkom calls, R0,39 a min for national Telkom calls and R0,95 a min to cellular numbers. On-net calls were billed at R0,11 a min.

Discussing the benefits of VoIP, Nashua Mobile said that it was flexible research that allowed companies to deploy their voice and data services on a single converged network.

It was said to be simpler to provision and move extensions around than it was with an analogue private branch exchange, as so then as being more cost effective, with networking infrastructure that was easier to maintain.