A social media poll conducted in March by South African telecommunications start-up NoPBX revealed that less than half (46%) of respondents worked in a business where the phones remained operational during load shedding.

“It’s no good keeping the lights on when the phones are off,” says Anton Potgieter, co-founder and MD of NoPBX, an app-based switchboard solution that works flawlessly during power outages — as long as the smartphones it is running off have battery life.

“For a profit-making firm operating in the most challenging socioeconomic environment of the last 20 years, it’s unforgiveable that the company’s revenue-generating phone system could be out of order, thanks to Eskom, for hours on end,” says Potgieter.

More information: www.nopbx.co.za

“It beggars belief when the solution is as simple as downloading an app to make and receive business calls on one’s existing smartphone,” he adds.

Compared to traditional emergency power solutions for switchboards, which can include invertors, UPSes, battery banks and generators, it’s comparatively easy to just keep your smartphones charged. The NoPBX poll also revealed that for a further 11% of employees, their phones only work during load shedding until the UPS backup dies. This is often within 20 minutes of blackouts starting

For the 43% of employees whose phones stop working as soon as the power goes out, it’s clearly time to adopt a new telecoms technology entirely.

The pay-as-you-go, no-contracts NoPBX service believes the traditional model of signing onerous contracts just to be supplied with business phone numbers is dead in the water. And load shedding is simply the final nail in the coffin of the clunky, desk-bound switchboard system.

Load shedding is simply the final nail in the coffin of the clunky, desk-bound switchboard system

Since November 2020, NoPBX has signed up some 2 200 companies, primarily small and medium-sized enterprises, which were all able to start making and receiving business calls on their existing cellular handsets immediately after signing up and downloading the NoPBX app.

GSM is the Global System for Mobile Communications, the world’s dominant cellular communications technology used by over five billion people in some 220 countries, including South Africa. GSM mobile access already reaches almost all of the people who live within the 1.2 million square kilometre area that is South Africa. It’s the perfect local platform on which to innovate for the betterment of people’s lives.

NoPBX clients now span the entire economic spectrum and include the likes of big enterprises, consultancies, guest houses, estate agents, financial consultants, car dealers, farmers, non-profits, schools, transport operators and many others.