Bayantel boosts grip on Cebu with launch of new products

CEBU, Philippines - The corporate solution arm of Bayan Telecommunications Inc. has intensified its penetration in Cebu providing seamless infrastructure support to the growing business process management (BPM) through its session initiation protocol (SIP) products.

SIP, a technology that supports voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) that runs all those third party applications like Viber, Skype, among others, is deemed as the main important technology for BPM, specifically the voice-based services.

The Lopez-owned telecommunication company is capitalizing its expertise on this technology and now doubling its efforts on introducing custom-made SIP-based technologies to Cebu-based BPM and the business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology sectors.

Bayantel executives led by Patrick Paul Gatchalian, head of Bayan Business, were here in Cebu recently to intensify penetration, noting the fast growing BPO –IT sector here.

“As part of our outsourcing and offshoring (O&O) market, the IT-BPO sector accounts for some 25 percent of our total business, and we intend to grow this market driven by our motivation to bring superior technology and reliable and innovative solutions and services to our customers delivered via our top notch personalized account management of ‘Business Mode Personal,” said Gatchalian.

Pervical Cavan, Bayan Business Solutions consultant for managed services, said that the growth of SIP technology adoption and use has steadily been on the increase over the last few years especially in BPO industry because business such as contact centers are now recognizing the benefits of true unified communications.

Cavan elaborated how SIP is changing the contact center for it enables them to transform the way they communicate by providing an affordable, reliable, and simple alternative to the desk phone because instead of making the phone ever more complicated and expensive, SIP now integrates the phone with computer and enables contact centers to work more efficiently and yet saving them money at the same time.

Today, about 95 percent of small and medium BPOs are using SIP-based “Asterisk” soft switch solution. Soft Switch can be integrated with public switch telephone network and GSM gateways.

Moreover, SIP technology products such as IP PBX/Soft Switch, Soft Phones and IP Phones, and a host of others, are continuously being developed by vendors to be made available in the market in the future.

In 2010, the Philippines overtook India as the leading destination for voice services. By end of 2012, employment in the voice sector grew by 19 percent, adding 81,000 net new jobs for the Filipino workforce.

Revenues, on the other hand, grew by 19 percent, to post US$8.7 billion. The Philippine contact center sector is still the largest in the world, making it the destination of choice for customer relations management (CRM).

Last year, the Philippine IT-BPO industry generated revenues of US$13.2 million from voice and non-voice segments and employed a total of 777,000 across the country.

This year, the industry is expecting revenues from the whole sector to increase to US$16 billion and provide employment to close to one million Filipinos.

Bayan has one of the biggest internet backbones in the country with more than 1Gbps link to the Global Internet backbone. It also manages one of the largest domestic IP peering points called National Internet and Gaming Exchange (NiGX).

Its nationwide network is a completely redundant meshed transmission network connected via a high-speed backbone consisting of satellite, terrestrial and submarine-based facilities. —/JMD (FREEMAN)