Microsoft has teamed up with Liquid Intelligent Technologies to upgrade its Teams videoconferencing platform, adding features that would allow its calling service to dial a landline or mobile phone as the battle with Zoom and WhatsApp heats up.
Internet-based calling has gained in popularity over the years as people conduct more of their business online through platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp and FaceTime. Microsoft is looking to bridge the gap between this type of call and fixed and mobile telephony through its partnership with Liquid.
Having bought up fixed-line operator Neotel a few years back, Liquid is one of the country’s largest voice players, particularly for enterprises. Liquid’s position as a Microsoft partner is also helping to further its evolution to become a fully fledged information technology outfit.
Through its OneVoice platform, Liquid will allow Microsoft customers around the world to integrate telephone plans in SA, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, initiated from Microsoft Teams. This is according to David Behr, group chief digital officer at Liquid.
In an interview with Business Day, Behr said normal voice calling continues to be important and is “not dead”.
He said when Covid-19 lockdowns came into effect in 2020 “the number of minutes that we were carrying on the network dropped initially because all those phones that were sitting on office desks were not being used”. Over time, there was a transfer of that telephone traffic to cloud platforms.
“We’re starting to see a pickup now as people integrate those PSTN (public switched telephone network) calls into their capability as we’re now seeing with Teams,” he said, referring to telephone lines.
“If the question is: is PSTN dead? The answer to me is absolutely not,” said Behr. “It will certainly not be growing as before but it will start to transform and will always be part of people’s workflows. There’s a convenience that comes with just being able to dial a number without being worried about whether someone has Teams or if they are on Zoom.”
For Microsoft, this is not the first time it has offered such capability. The Silicon Valley giant also owns Skype, which had in the past been popular for having the ability to make normal calls through a paid service.
By partnering with Liquid, Microsoft differentiates this iteration by having the ability to have localised or existing numbers used through Teams as opposed to the generic, machine-generated ones on other online-based platforms.
Liquid’s experience during the pandemic is in line with a general decline in fixed-voice services over the last decade, which has forced Telkom, the largest player in the market, to pivot its business towards mobile. Telkom made R6.6bn from this line of business in the full year to end-March, down a quarter on the previous year.
Part of businessman Strive Masiyiwa’s Econet, Liquid has built Africa’s largest independent fibre network, stretching more than 100,000km, and operates data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi.
"Liquid is expanding its cloud business, security services and other technologies on top of its existing telecoms capability. As such, the business is currently rebranding itself to Liquid Intelligent Technologies"
Correction: September 28 2021:
A previous version of this article referred to the company as Liquid Telecom. The company has since changed its name to Liquid Intelligent Technologies.
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