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Avoxi Communications has accord with CWJ via its holding firm, says VP Gregg Dalmar |
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Written by jamaicaobserver.com
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Tuesday, 10 August 2004 |
Response to Business Observer stories: With regards to your recent article entitled "War heats up for Overseas-Call Business" dated July 28th, 2004, and a related article published on August 4th, 2004, Avoxi Communications would like to clarify several points, which were raised.
Avoxi is not a VoIP calling card service provider. Avoxi is an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP), providing telephonic solutions around the world. As a fully legal-licensed international carrier in Jamaica, we are able to deliver a suite of telecommunication services.
Avoxi has never directly had a commercial agreement with C&WJ for wholesale services, but had secured commercial agreements with C&WJ through the telecommunications firm's licensed holding company. Furthermore, whilst the average cost of a T1 as quoted in the August 4th article may be US$8,420, VoIP providers since September 2003 have been asked to pay a premium of US$13,225 for C&WJ's voice enabled dedicated Internet access (DIA) T1 service. This is the same basic DIA product others buy for Internet service but the VoIP providers must pay the aforementioned premium in order to operate legally.
Avoxi's business model up to February 2004 provided VoIP service to our customers who were able to provide their own high speed Internet access (HSIA), such as DSL, which was obtained by C&WJ. The integrity of the voice quality is only ever as good as the Internet connection that supports it and our customers demanded a much more stable and reliable platform due to frequent problems with the DSL service.
These demands forced Avoxi to modify its business model and provide our own tier one network to support the voice services, which we offer. Avoxi wrote a white paper in March 2004 educating the Jamaican market about the pitfalls of using the public Internet to deliver VoIP technology - this can be available by sending an e-mail to . Avoxi is not at war with anyone! - A competitive environment has been created with the liberalization process of the telecom industry in the year 2000. Whenever a market evolves from a monopolistic environment into a competitive market, there will obviously be differences of opinions, differences in strategy, 'misguidance' and misinterpretations. Competition drives true service to the consumer and as such customer awareness becomes even more critical. It is important that incumbents work cooperatively with new entrants to provide essential services necessary to provide service to the end consumer.
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