The Seacom cable has at last been launched and
the move to more, faster and cheaper international
bandwidth in South Africa has begun. While consumers and
businesses don't expect any immediate drop in bandwidth
pricing, the country's burgeoning contact centre
industry may not be wrong in expecting to see a
resurgence of interest from international clients for
'offshore' services.
By Paul Fick, MD of Spescom
DataFusion
Previously, all overseas voice traffic moved through
the monopoly controlled SAT3/SAFE cable that lands in
Cape Town, at enormous cost, or had to make use of
satellite connectivity - along with all the latency
challenges this technology brought. For potential
international contact centre customers considering the
use of local call centres for global 24x7 customer
support, sales and service, this translated into a high
cost, risky business.
What's the alternative if disaster strikes and one
needs redundancy, you can almost hear them ask. In
fact, this was really all they could rely on, with
little hope of price competition. Now Seacom offers them
the opportunity of not having all their eggs in a single
expensive basket. Is this the missing piece of the
puzzle for the industry? Will it open the doors to
investment?
The Seacom cable, while not a silver bullet to South
Africa's high communication costs, does double the
available international bandwidth.
Along with the
lure of additional bandwidth the West Africa Cable
System
(WACS) and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable
System (EASSy) will bring over the next two years, it
may be enough - together with South Africa's other
highly appealing assets - to sway investors to
re-evaluate the attractiveness of our destination.
In Malaysia and India large European and U.S. banks
and ICT companies run massive offshore operations. South
Africa can offer similar levels of call centre industry
maturity with high levels of contact centre management
and stable, reliable operations; we live in time zones
that are compatible with service hours in these
countries; speak in pleasant neutral English accents;
and our government volubly encourages growth and
investment in the local contact centre industry - all of
which are attractive traits to international
customers.
We have the infrastructure, the professionalism, the
capability and the will to grow this industry. With just
a little more assistance from government - say some
revision of the tax laws pertaining to this industry to
provide added investment incentive - perhaps the
projected 4% per annum growth in the South African
contact centre industry can be nurtured and
strengthened.
As part of the Avaya EMEA Business Partner Advisory
Council, Spescom has on numerous occasions paused to
assess South Africa's capabilities against those of the
best in the world - we are confident that if we can take
hold of the opportunities that now come our way, South
Africa can create a strong foothold in this global
industry.
