Being the last post for the year (what the &^%#$*& am I doing at my computer on New Year’s Eve?), the theme would either be looking back or forward. Always being a forward-looking person (perhaps due to recognizing my inability to change the past), I took a poll of our staff asking for their predictions for the coming year. Many of them could not be printed because they either breached confidentiality or basic morality, so here are a few pearls:
- Call centres will come back onshore as the swing is toward better customer service, and a desire to converse in English
- There will be a proliferation of smaller VOIP players as ISP desperately jump on the voice bandwagon in an attempt not to be one-dimensional
- When the next cataclysmic world event occurs and everyone scrambles to the internet to read about it, many VOIP customers will realize that the QoS just isn’t there for so many providers, and there is still a vast gap in quality between circuit-switched and packet-switched calls
- Telstra will introduce new policies to artificially mandate the need for PSTN lines as more and more customers dump them for ADSL 2+ and VOIP
- A few larger VOIP provides will position as dominant wholesale providers in order to facilitate virtual VOIP resellers, and provide them with an in-a-box solution that includes LNP and other essential ingredients
- The Do Not Call register will have a huge impact on call centres, and on smaller CSPs
Well, that’s about it for me for this year. Thanks very much to all those who supported this industry initiative of ours. Look out for some exciting new developments in the new year!
This was also posted published at [Billing Bureau].
