Contrary to negative reports that the take-up of VOIP will be slow in this country due to high costs and restricted bandwidth, leading ISP and telecommunications company, AltX-listed DataPro group, believes the acceptance and implementation of VOIP in corporate SA will gather momentum and become a "high growth and lucrative market".
This is according to DataPro`s newly-appointed operations executive, Jaco Voigt, who believes that one of the biggest investments to be made by corporate companies in SA during 2005 will be capital investments in VOIP.
"Coupled with this will be the upgrade of the internal infrastructures or networks of a large majority of companies, which in many cases is long overdue.
"With new high levels of buoyancy in the IT and telecoms market and the impact of renewed interest in integrated solutions, we are bound to see a leap in revenues."
A study published by Forrester Research shows that South African IT spending is on the way up and, concurring with DataPro, the company further states that, with the deregulation of VOIP in February, companies are likely to invest heavily in VOIP technology.
"Take-up has been slower than expected as both vendors and companies gear up to implement and offer this new technology. But we are expecting an increase in VOIP investments, which is likely to spill over into other sectors, including boosting the sale of hardware equipment and other associated software and services. Another contributing factor to these boom times is the fact that the rand is remaining consistently strong against the dollar and has regained almost 100% in value since its collapse in 2001. It has lost a bit of value lately and is at its lowest in months. But it is certainly not weak. Imported products are back in favour and there is an increasing demand for smarter networks - ones which are capable of handling the management and control of all network traffic, including voice, video and data."
In addition, with the low interest rates - the lowest since the early 1980s - and the low core inflation figure as monitored by the Reserve Bank, consumers and companies are more bullish after spending money.
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