When voice over IP services were finally made legal in South Africa around a decade ago, a number of players descended on the market to compete. Open source software, in particular the Asterisk PBX software, helped most of these startups get on their feet quickly and at low cost.

Connection Telecom and BitCo are just two examples of independent service providers that used Asterisk to get their environments running at low cost. Rob Lith, director at Connection Telecom and a former executive at Mweb, Internet Africa and MTN, says open source software has allowed his company to contain costs as well as remain in control of the evolution of its own business.