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Opinion Robert Ndlovu
YOU have seen men and women at work digging trenches and laying cables parallel to major highways. Even within the cities and towns you have seen yellow, red or blue pipes being buried under the ground.

Instead of laying copper cables, use of fibre optics offers high speeds to connect cities.

They also have a greater data and information carrying capacity than copper cables over long distances.

Since this technology uses light to carry information it is immune from electromagnetic forces.

And theft of buried cables is a futile exercise unlike copper as used fibre won’t fetch a dime.

In short, fibre optics technology involves uses of “hair” thin glass strands to enable communication by use of light travelling inside the tiny glass tube.

This has made it possible to connect landlocked Zimbabwe to Asia, Europe and the Americas via Beira and Cape Town interconnections via under-sea cables. Within urban centres this technology has enabled various telecoms companies to interconnect their base stations to their switches using fibre optics hence offering true 3G /4G and soon LTE so that end users can experience true broadband internet.

Fibre optics has given birth to higher speed internet connectivity referred to as broadband.

Broadband comes in different forms, wired or wireless. The terms leased line, 3G, WiMax, ADSL, FTTP are different ways to deliver fast Internet, which would be 64 kilo bits per second and above — theoretically of course.

These are access means of delivering Internet to the customer premises from either a satellite hub or fibre to the undersea cable.

Of late there are new voice services like FB calling, Viber and WhatsApp calling. This has been made possible by the opening up of the Internet pipe — that is increased broadband speeds.

The use of the Internet to carry voice is technically referred to as voice over internet telephony (VoIP) and is forcing traditional telephony companies all over the world to remodel and reshape their business strategies.

While this kind of technology will NOT eliminate mobile wireless (GSM & CDMA) revenues, it is a fact that it is already “eating” into them. Internet telephony is a disruptive technology if your company “refuses” to flex with time.

With such threats comes along opportunities!

Call centres

A call centre is a system that handles both high volumes of incoming and outgoing calls as efficiently and economically as possible.

Call centres handle calls, then route the calls to agents in a skillset that most closely matches the needs of the caller.

This set up is the basis of a call centre to make and receive calls on behalf of huge corporations who do not want any headaches about shipment details of their products but want to focus on what they know best.

India, Singapore, Phillipines are the leading call centre providers. South Africa and Kenya are also getting into the game and doing pretty well.

Enter Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s new ICT Policy (2015) captures this development in the context of the economic blue-print, Zim-Asset.

Zimbabwe – Putting the pieces together

The writing is on the wall. There are basically two types of call centres – inbound and outbound.

An inbound call centre is set up so that call agents can take incoming calls and serves clients for the organisation or for corporation based abroad.

An outbound call centre does the opposite.

Corporations based in Europe and even in South Africa can outsource marketing of their insurance services to a call centre located right in the heart of the “City of Kings”.

This is telemarketing. The use of a telephone to call potential or existing clients for new services and products in the destination market — in this case Europe.

Yes a call centre in Marondera can market new cellular services for a cellular company based in Canada.

A tourism company based in Victoria Falls can market its resort centres, game parks and waterfalls to Japan using call centre technology, which does not care about geographical location of source and destination of the call.

Callers from Japan can simply dial their local Japanese number that is routed straight to your call centre location in Zimbabwe — thanks to VoIP.

In essence this is using Japanese telephone numbers in Zimbabwe to market your package. Although you are physically in Zimbabwe, the Internet cares less, it will route the call as if your were in Tokyo. This removal of boundaries and barriers has seen Asia handling millions of calls per week from Europe or America.

Setting up a centre

First and foremost you must have a client who is willing to outsource their customer service chores to you, otherwise you will set up a white elephant.

It is your role to get those corporations to ink an agreement for you to do their customer care services.

This will involve a lot of research and business analysis to come up with a working, fundable, manageable and profitable business case.

It might even mean involving an expert to scout and hook up potential corporations who want to outsource their customer care services or telemarketing services.

Technically, depending on the size of your call centre, which can be made up of 10 to 1,000 and more seats depending on the volume of your business indicated by your call volume. You will need high speed internet connectivity ,computers , earpieces with microphones, desks and chairs computer cabling, redundant power supply relevant software partitioned cubicles for sound proofing, a monitoring station and a coffee maker !

Show Me The Money

The corporation/organisation which you are offering the services for is the one that pays you based on your agreed contract conditions. This is what is known as Business Process OutSourcing (BPO).

ICT policy and national development

Development of any country is seriously hinges in its ability to harness ICT to its advantage. It is therefore imperative that those tasked with the drafting, implementation and deployment of ICT projects fully understand that this is NOT a game where losing is an option.

A budget from the Ministry of ICT for a pilot run for this would make much sense – walking the talk.

*Robert Ndlovu is an ICT consultant based in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on [email protected] or +263 77 600 2605.