CallingtheCape

South African retail bank Absa has become the first investor in the Business Process Outsourcing cluster of the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ), an investment that would create 94 new jobs, the Coega Development Corporation (CDC) and Absa reported.

Interest in South Africa's business processing and outsourcing (BPO) sector remained high, with a new 600-seater call centre planned for the Free State, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa announced.

South Africa's second national network operator, Neotel, which is still executing tests to check routing and billing, has announced that it has successfully ported its first block of numbers from Telkom. This is a major step toward finally giving South African corporate customers a choice of operators.

Full Circle is a leading contact centre business dedicated to providing international clients with a full range of services. We aim to provide our clients with a one-stop-shop for comprehensive service, advice and implementation support enabling them to deliver world class customer service from SA.

A sequel to the first study of the potential for Voice over IP among SA businesses, including a survey of 100 corporations, more than a 1000 SMEs. The 2005 study correctly forecast that VoIP would achieve limited take-up among small business during its first year of legal availability. The new study examines the impact of VoIP during the first two years, and provides a technology outlook for Internet Protocol in the telecommunications industry.