While competitors like ZOL VoIP have already gone mainstream to attract most private players, TelOne has an advantage to take over state owned enterprises, a niche market which has been untapped.
TelOne Managing Director, Chipo Mutasa however stated that the government owes TelOne about $72m of unpaid bills and implementing the VoiP in government departments will be reduction in communication costs and efficiency in government communications.
"Government owes TelOne about $72m of unpaid bills and some of this bills are voice calls which by nature are much more expensive than internet protocol based calls," she said
VoIP is a technology that allows you to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular copper phone line. A VoIP phone system connects to a Local Area Network (LAN) and uses it as the backbone of that system.
The call can be made directly from a computer, a special VoIP phone, or a traditional phone connected to a special adapter. VoIP connects to local, long distance, mobile and international numbers.
"VoIP Project seeks to modernise the communication infrastructure for the government, It also seeks to achieve cost efficiency within the government in terms of communication,"
TelOne Engineer Lawrence Nkala revealed that they are working with the government in the Ministry of ICT to come up with the modernisation communication system programme for the government and they have brought Huawei on bought to assist n facilitating the project.
"Currently, government has been experiences leakages through high cost communication, abuse of communication services and also are lacking in advanced telecommunication services."
"We're working with the supplier Huawei, and at this stage the project costs $38m, where the $28m is for the supplier and the $10m will be for cabling costs, wiring and equipment required during implementation which will be done by TelOne"
The Implementation period is expected to have a lifespan of 24 months and the first 12 months will require an injection of 22 million.
So far, progress made has been characterised by the signing of contracts between TelOne and The Government and the supplier contract between TelOne and Huawei.
The project is set to kick start in 2019 provided TelOne gets funding in time.
