VOIP in Fiji

It seems everybody’s jumping on the VoIP bandwagon. After the Nepalese government announced its plan of legally introducing VoIP in the country, the latest to join the troupe is the tiny island nation of Fiji, whose VoIP laws are currently under review to allow extensive implementation of VoIP in the country.

Last month, the Cabinet of Fiji approved the VoIP policy, enabling limited, regulatory provision of VoIP services in the country. Soon thereafter, like a good business company responding to changes in its legal environment in what seems like a textbook adaption, wireless internet provider Unwired Fiji announced its intentions to go VoIP, claiming that the technology would allow customers to make calls to popular destinations like Australia, New Zealand and the USA at less than 10 cents per minute. Responding to the declaration, Telecom Fiji Limited’s General Manger Ian Lyons said that the introduction of VoIP in the country was inevitable. Telecom Fiji Limited (TFL) is the sole provider of local and national telephony services in Fiji, and owns the only public switched telephone network in the country. In other words, it has a monopoly on the provision of network services in Fiji.

“The question is not will it happen?” Lyons said. “If you look at every carrier in the developed markets, it has happened. The question is when and how. VoIP will arrive in the country sooner or later and eventually, TFL will have to consider keeping pace with technology.” Smart man. I can see why he made to GM.

Like many other countries in the world, Fiji’s laws are not entirely pro-VoIP, making the economy lose millions of dollars of revenue due to illegal International Long Distance call bypass service offered by VoIP powered public phone booths and cyber cafes. Legal constraints are, in fact, one of the biggest barricades to completely VoIP-ing the telecom industry the world over. Some countries just don’t like the idea of experimenting with a brand new telecom technology (they’re no scientists, I can bet you), while other governments are plain worried that going VoIP will completely uproot the existing telecom industry and render valuable voters jobless (“Down with the governor!”). Lyons however, says that the issue is on the table, and that the concerned regulatory body and the government are exploring the regulatory framework and releasing an interim paper on it (And here I was, thinking that it’s only us students who have to tussle with examinations. All the best, VoIP!)

Coming down to volume and revenue, Lyons believes that going VoIP would increase overall call volumes, and that TFL’s challenge would be to move at an appropriate pace to keep the revenue share that they already have. I think that’s achievable. If I’m calling my best friend and I have to pay something like 75 cents a minute, I’ll talk for about five minutes. Ten at the maximum. That translates into something like $3.75 (I’m talking for five minutes here). However, if I’m calling my best friend and I have to pay something like 5 cents a minute, basic human tendency to fulfill one’s social desires (yeah, I know… heavy psychological stuff) will not only make me talk for fifty minutes, but also make me call three other friends. Translating that into worldly dollars (of course they’re worldly… they make the world go round, don’t they?), I pay $2.50 + $1.50 for talking to three other friends for ten minutes each (they’re not best friends, you know). Now my arithmetic’s pretty weak, but the calculator tells me that that comes out to $4.00, which is only slightly more than what I was paying initially – $3.75. Providing that TFL manages to meet the quality expectations of its customers, it should have no trouble at all in maintaining its existing revenue share.

So if things go right, we’ll be able to classify tiny Fiji as a Green VoIP Zone soon. Another territory won by Internet telephony. A small one, true. But a victory nonetheless.

This post is contributed by Samarth Chandola, full time VOIP news Editor for VOIP Guide.