FNB gets into telecoms

Johannesburg - First National Bank (FNB) has announced a range of telecommunications services it is launching under its FNB Connect subsidiary.

The new services allow customers to use FNB as their internet service provider and for telephone services using voice over IP telephony (Voip) technology.

According to Carmen Roux, CEO of FNB Connect, it makes perfect sense for FNB to use its existing network infrastructure and partnerships to launch Internet-based services.

The bank is one of Telkom's biggest clients and operates a national network used for banking transactions and maintaining ATM machines. It also has SMS resources that are currently used to send in excess of 45 million text messages a month and Internet applications for billing and payments. FNB therefore sees the Connect range of products as a natural evolution.

"This is a big step for the bank to take and we have to take it one step at a time, hence we are only offering this to existing clients at this point," said Roux.

She said that FNB has been testing the services with the help of employees and is now extending them to its customer base.

"In the future we will look at the business model and decide if it is viable to offer it to non-FNB clients," she said.

FNB's solutions are highly competitive. As an ADSL service provider, the bank is now officially offering the cheapest prices in the market via its Surf product.

ADSL bandwidth can be purchased at R0.069 per megabyte and customers are able to purchase bandwidth in any quantity from R20. Bandwidth from FNB Connect also does not expire monthly, but instead rolls over on an annual basis.

According to Roux, all bandwidth on the service is unshaped - meaning that the full capability of the connection is available irrespective of what users are doing online.

This makes FNB Connect 57% cheaper than Axxess, a leading ADSL service provider, for unshaped data at R69 per gigabyte on FNB Surf. At time of writing Axxess charges R119 per gigabyte for unshaped data and R69 for semi-shaped.

Prices on FNB Talk - a range of voice over IP telephony offerings is also highly competitive. The service is Sip-compliant, allowing customers to use any software application that supports the standard.

FNB also has its own client software that it has developed for Windows computers and Windows Mobile and Symbian-based mobile phones such as Nokia smartphones.

Using the FNB client one can make calls, send SMS or chat on Instant Messenger. With third-party SIP software only calls can be made. I have been testing this using the Fring mobile application and an application called Telephone for my Mac.

FNB Talk offers peak calls to cellphones at R1.79 per minute and international calls to any number in SA from R0.46 per minute.

During a recent trip to the USA, the writer tested the service by calling a cellular number in South Africa for six and a half minutes which was billed at R10.40. Bandwidth is billed separately and one can use the service wherever one is connected to a low-latency Internet connection.

FNB Talk packages are also prepaid with a once-off R49 connection fee and annual roll over of purchased airtime. All services are topped up from a linked FNB bank account and via a website that is built on the same software FNB uses for its Internet banking, accessible at www.fnbconnect.co.za

Roux says that fax, video and other features are planned for Connect in the near future.

- Fin24.com