Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with iVox General Manager, Michael ClarkeLelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network and joining me from iVox is its General Manager, Michael Clarke. Michael welcome to FNN.
Michael Clarke: Thank you for having me.
Lelde Smits: iVox is a wholesale telecommunications provider. Could you outline what you do?
Michael Clarke: Yes, iVox is a wholesale Voiceover IP provider. Now we’re an originator of web services and what that means is we don’t actually resell someone else’s services, but we build our own and we then on sell those to smaller providers. Two main revenue streams - the first is the White Label service. Now that’s for smaller telcos who don’t have any infrastructure, don’t have any support teams, don’t have any billing systems and we provide them all of that. Rebrand it in their own name and they then on sell that to retail customers. The second stream is for the established providers who do have their own systems and we provide them out phone call termination, origination and number porting services.
Lelde Smits: iVox merged with Inabox Group Limited
(ASX:IAB) when the Company listed on the ASX last year. What has been the upside to joining Inabox?
Michael Clarke: For iVox, being part of a larger group means we have access to more funding and more resources. So we’re putting that to work to develop new product lines and to scale up our capacity. Now for Inabox, iVox brings Voiceover IP experience and knowledge and it’s a transition from being an aggregator or reseller of services, to being an originator or builder of telco services. Finally, a new revenue stream with stable and healthy profit.
Lelde Smits: Why do customers use iVox’s services ahead of competitors?
Michael Clarke: Our customers come to us for our range of services, so it’s a true one-stop shop. We only do, not only voice but broadband and fixed line as well, and we have a true national coverage. So there’re over 2000 zones in Australia and we service all of those. Our customers tell us that they stay with us, because our support levels are better than the competition and our voice quality is exceptional. And that’s something we are quite proud of.
Lelde Smits: Could you outline how the typical SME business phone system set up has changed over the past five years?
Michael Clarke: SMEs are now starting to accept a Cloud based or a Hosted PBX as a viable alternative. It’s part of a general shift in ICT spend from Capex to Opex. The benefit for the customer is it’s a simple monthly fee, rather than large upfront costs.
Lelde Smits: Finally Michael, what are some of the developments iVox is working on?
Michael Clarke: Our big focus this year is on automation. We’ve developed a portal called iVox Connect which is where our customers go to order, provision and manage all their services, including number porting. Now that’s typically been a very manual and labour intensive process, so this saves us time and saves them time. We’ve got a big switch upgrade later this year. Now that’s more capacity and more functionality and again, that should be by the end of this year.
Lelde Smits: Michael Clarke, thank you for the update from iVox.
Michael Clarke: Thank you very much.
Ends
