SA IS well placed to become a global call-centre hub, but high telecommunications costs and growing competition from the rest of the continent could threaten the fledgling industry, experts say.

SA is unlikely to take on call-centre giant India, but cheap skilled labour, solid infrastructure and a time zone shared with Europe that also works well for US customers make it an obvious choice, they say.

"South Africans have a cultural affinity with English-speaking markets — if you ask an Indian or Filipino agent about your current account or savings account they may not necessarily be able to empathise," Peter Ryan, a call-centre analyst from research group Datamonitor, told Reuters on Friday.

But high call costs due to state-controlled Telkom’s monopoly of the fixed-line market was deterring investors, experts said.

Paris Mashile, head of the Independent Communications Authority of SA, said seven or eight US companies had visited SA last week with a view to building hubs, but said they were put off by call costs.

"They believed the environment here was conducive, that we are well placed for outsourcing, but they are deterred by the cost of communication," Mashile said.

Ryan said SA’s call-centre industry was growing, and forecast agent positions — the number of seats in centres — would total 6200 by 2008 — a more than five-fold increase since 2003. He did not give a figure for revenue.

Some companies from the Netherlands were even employing Afrikaans staff and training them in Dutch to serve customers there, Ryan said.

But he also warned industry players at a conference in Johannesburg that SA had to watch out for growing competition from North Africa and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

"Botswana, for example, has a strong educated labour force, strong English fluency, aggressive promotional strategies and excellent incentives," said Ryan. "In tandem with this, there is a strong focus on information technology and telecoms investment." Reuters