Category: Product News

You’ve planned your holiday meticulously, your route is mapped, and everything packed. You’ve arranged for someone to water the plants, emptied the fridge, set the alarm and your house is locked up tighter than Pollsmoor prison.  It’s the festive season, and nothing can ruin your well-deserved December break.

While you’re sipping Mai-Thais on a beach somewhere, barefoot and blissfully oblivious, intruders pop in unannounced back home, and start helping themselves to your belongings – ticking off items on their personal Christmas shopping lists.

By the time armed response shows up, they’ve derailed your gate, busted the lock on the back door and cleared you out before you could order another cocktail.

Crime statistics spike exponentially during the festive season, especially property crimes such as house burglaries. These are opportunistic crimes, and when the cat’s away the proverbial mouse will play.

You can’t ignore the realities of crime during this time, and can’t stay home standing guard all the time, peeking through the curtains in paranoia – all you can do is take the best measures possible, and take control of your security.

So you have electric fencing, security beams outside and an alarm system all linked to armed response. While these are effective to a point, there are flaws with the system in that response is often delayed, often as a result of frequent false alarms.

Short of building a moat or placing nefarious booby traps around the perimeter, what can you do to decrease your security risk this festive season?

The first step is to get up to speed with how criminals think, know what they look out for and when you are vulnerable. When writing his book Home Invasion: Robbers Disclose What You Should Know, Professor Rudolph Zinn interviewed a group of convicted criminals to find out from the horse’s mouth how they target people.

His chats with these bad boys revealed pretty frightening bits of information. Burglars prefer high walls, with no visibility from the street. They pick a neighbourhood and go from house to house ringing doorbells until they find a house with nobody home. They love sliding doors, because it allows very easy entry.

Invariably, some or more of the factors a burglar favours will apply to you. If you don’t have a high wall, you’ll have a sliding door or multiple access points or live within easy access to main roads. You may have a perimeter alarm, but no dog and a sliding door, and nobody answered the intercom.

Security experts recommend changing your normal intercom system, to one of the new systems which connect a call to your mobile phone when the doorbell rings, so you can answer any time even when not at home.

Another popular option is CCTV surveillance, which firstly acts as a deterrent but also ups the chances of arrest if an attack has happened. Technology has advanced quite a bit, making it possible to monitor your property remotely, via a mobile device. Vox Telecom’s Guardian Eye Lite solution for example, allows you to monitor your property in real time, with live footage and push video accessed via an app on your phone.   The system even has two way audio communication, so you can listen and talk directly to intruders in your home. This means you can make an immediate decision on whether to alert armed response, negate a false alarm or let someone into your premises.

While there is always a possibility of your house being targeted, your best defence is to make sure your home is the least optimal option for criminals to gain access to.

Check that all your equipment is working properly, make sure someone collects your mail and visits your property regularly. If your house will be completely unattended the whole time, make sure you are in contact with your neighbours so they can alert you to any strange activity, and consider video surveillance which you can monitor while you are away.  The more barriers you have, the more likely it is they will choose somewhere else.

So before you leave your house unattended this festive season, consider your risks and find the security solution that will make your home the least appealing to the criminally inclined opportunist.

Vox has launched a first-to-market Uncapped Voice product aimed at reducing the telephony costs of small to medium businesses.

“We want to make telephony costs predictable, and cost effective for small to medium businesses, and an uncapped voice solution, with a fixed monthly fee, is undoubtedly the way to go,” says Henda Edwardes, Executive Head of Communications Services at Vox.

Uncapped Voice for business enables unlimited calls to mobile, national and local fixed line and select international destinations.

Adds Edwardes, “For too long, the discussion has just been about rates, and we want to rather focus on making this about value and quality.  Our Uncapped Voice will only be provided over uncontended last mile, to ensure superior voice quality for our customers.”

Three contract options have been created for the Uncapped Voice offering, starting at R1495 per month for five outbound channels, R4990 per month for 10 outbound channels and R8985 per month for 15 outbound channels.  Vox will match outbound channels, with the equivalent inbound channels.

Customers will be required to port to Vox, and thereby retain their existing fixed line number(s).  Porting can take between two and four weeks, depending on the incumbent provider.

To incentivise new customers to migrate their voice requirements to Vox Telecom, the company will be complementing the Uncapped Voice for business solution with a PBX for free for six months (on a minimum 24 month contract.)

Concludes Edwardes, “There is no longer the requirement to get bill shock at the end of each month, depending on the number of calls made or received.  Uncapped Voice will change how small to medium businesses not only consume, but also budget for fixed line telephony.”

 

Vox has launched Sitebuilder, a website development solution that enables end users and small businesses to create and maintain professional and fully responsive websites, with ease.

“Sitebuilder is the first of many new developments in our easy-to-use digital management solutions and provides users with an extraordinary degree of customisation, delivering maximum reliability, and minimising startup costs.  We’ve worked hard to make it easy for our customers to build their own websites,” says Riaan Gouws, Web Hosting and Backup Product Manager at Vox.

SMEs are an increasingly important, but underserviced market when it comes to digital communications tools, and in particular, website development.  Sitebuilder provides small business owners with the ability to manage, build and add features to their website, without having to depend on an external party.  This includes having advanced features on the site, and no requirement to constantly update the content management system (CMS), with monthly vulnerability and/ or monthly patches like on other platforms.

“Research tells us that experienced web development agencies in Gauteng easily charge R10 000 and upwards, to build a basic website, paired with additional monthly retainer fees for maintenance, leaving many small business owners, unable to enter the digital space,” adds Gouws.

Sitebuilder is a month-to-month service that includes web hosting, and is available in three packages (Sitebuilder Starter, Booster and Turbo), to ensure that there is a best fit solution for SMEs, not only in terms of number of pages, but also budgets.

Adds Gouws, “The reality is that brick and mortar storefronts are increasingly becoming digital storefronts, so the requirement to deliver a cost effective model becomes more critical for SMEs, with e-commerce capabilities, and an integrated AdWords element.  We’ve included these in Sitebuilder, as add-ons, and created a pricing structure, that makes these a viable addition to any small business’ digital strategy.”

Despite the ease of use, and pre-built templates for a DIY approach, a Do-it-for-me (DIFM) service is available across each of the three Sitebuilder packages, whereby Vox Telecom’s team of expert web developers, can build the website for you.

Concludes Gouws, “We’re hoping to disrupt the web development by delivering a cost effective solution, either as a DIY or DIFM model, and in so doing, lowering the barrier to entry, and reducing the risk for the growing small business market.”

Do-it-for-me plans start at R4 900 once off or R307 per month for a turnkey website built based on content supplied to the team of expert web developers at Vox.

Vox’s professional Voice on Hold Services allow you to make use of a professional voice over artist to greet your customers when they call your company, and to share promotional content and frequently asked questions with them, when you place them on hold.

Listen to a sample of our female voice artist: