{"id":5822,"date":"2012-02-10T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=5822"},"modified":"2012-02-10T08:17:21","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:17:21","slug":"lcr-will-never-die-jacques-du-toit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/5822\/lcr-will-never-die-jacques-du-toit\/","title":{"rendered":"LCR will never die: Jacques du Toit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Least Cost Routing (LCR) will never die.<\/p>\n

This is according to Vox Orion<\/a> MD Jacques du Toit<\/a>, who aurgues that, while GSM LCR will eventually die, there will always be a market for some form of LCR.<\/p>\n

\u201cLCR is a different word for \u2018arbitrage\u2019. While there is something like MTR [mobile termination rates] and FTR [fixed termination rates] there will always be a market for some form of LCR,\u201d says du Toit.<\/p>\n

The Vox Orion MD says that they have seen a decline in LCR revenue in 2011, as expected in a deflationary market. \u201cThis will continue as MTR\/FTR is reduced until March 2013,\u201d said du Toit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same applies to access and Internet – as input costs are reduced, the benefit will be passed to the customer and that will have an effect on revenue,\u201d says du Toit.<\/p>\n

Du Toit, however, points out that there has been no \u2018decline impact\u2019 in their LCR profits.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years, the market has matured and service providers are forced to operate on minimal profits. A minimal \u2018absolute\u2019 margin is added to input cost, irrespective of what the cost is,\u201d says du Toit.<\/p>\n

Du Toit does not expect the LCR market to change much in 2012. He says that he expect to see the same as what they experienced over the last two years:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll traditional GSM LCR providers are still actively converting their customers to VOIP solutions, and Telkom becoming much more aggressive and protective at the larger corporate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vox Orion continues to future-proof the company by moving their traditional GSM LCR clients to VoIP, and du Toit says they have been very successful in this department. \u201cWe have converted just under 50% of our minutes to VOIP,\u201d says du Toit.<\/p>\n

An added benefit of VoIP over GSM LCR is that it provides operators with better margins.<\/p>\n

Du Toit says that the reasons for the higher VoIP are twofold:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Vodacom did not reduce the LCR rate in March last year. That forced the service provider to aggressively discount the retail rate in order to make it worthwhile for the customer. These discounts had a massive effect on margins. MTN , however did reduce their retail rate and allowed us to keep the %GP constant.<\/li>\n
  2. The MTR\u2019s are better than our cost on GSM\u2026this allows for a slightly higher margin while the retail rates are the same.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Apart from migrating their voice minutes to VoIP, Vox Orion is embarking on various strategies which include:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • A \u201cremote CCTV monitoring\u201d service was launched in October 2011. This service uses un-utilized data capacity after hours, and reduces the cost of on-site guards;<\/li>\n
    • They continue to develop the video conferencing market by introducing bridging services and Smartboard collaboration tools. There are two very distinct markets, the corporate market and the educational market that will be targeted with different USPs;<\/li>\n
    • With the reduction of access and internet cost, they say they will deliver more hosted services to customers. Their cloud-based product range currently includes hosted IP PABX and call centre solutions; CCTV monitoring; faxing; video conferencing bridging; data archiving and recovery; and telephone management solutions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Vox Orion MD Jacques du Toit says that, while GSM least cost routing will die, there will always be a market for some form of LCR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,1454,28,65,27,1453],"class_list":["post-5822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-headline","tag-jacques-du-toit","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom","tag-vox-orion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5822"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5824,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5822\/revisions\/5824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}