iCTel : Scam or Brilliant Idea?

Voice over IP has always been a controvercial topic in South Africa.

I can still clearly remember the shock on my mother’s face in 1995 when she heard my uncle’s voice, who was living in America at the time, coming from my computer  speakers.

The most notible thing I remember is how my family was very affraid of Telkom finding out about my “apparent” illegal calling activity from my computer (over 56kb Dialup)

At that time I was using some Internet Calling service which has probably been bought over by a much bigger company and who’s technology is possibly incorporated in most of the VOIP services available now.  The software was clunky and only reserved for the geekiest, but even then it called to normal landlines (for free)

Luckily the fear of the government mentality has deminished a bit in South Africa and the main monopolies of Telecommunication in South Africa is slowly being broken down. Theslowly but surely uptake of  computer services like Skype and the like has shown South Africans what they  have been missing all along. 

This is definately enabling innovation in the field of Telephone calls over Data Networks, especially Cellphone data networks, as they are the most used viewer to browse the internet in South Africa.

This page will be updated with interresting Articles that I have found reflecting VOIP developments in South Africa.

List of Articles:

2004: Restricting VoIP and WiFi costs South Africa its position as a technology leader in Africa

2006: http://solokay.blogspot.com/2006/05/south-africa-issuing-voip-numbers.html