A couple of weeks ago, I received an SMS from Vodacom asking me if I’d like to recieve my monthly statement electronically. Being a gadget and email junkie, I had to give it a try.

Today I received an email from Vodacom telling me more about their Interactive E-billing and how it all works. Your statements are encrypted using .efa file type. Im not too sure what this all means, but you have to download the decrypter in order to access your account.

What else seems really nifty is a built in sorting function that allows you to sort your calls and data usage. So seperating your business and personal calls now becomes a breeze! The company that Vodacom are using to deliver this service is EMC (email connection). This less paper strategy works for me. Save those trees! :-)

Now if only Telkom would follow suite and offer this type of service for their customers, they would earn some serious browny points before the second operator comes into existance. Normally, companies pay for your cellphone bill or give you a monthly cellphone allowance, so sorting your calls isn’t such a priority for some people. But sorting out your landline calls is and always has been a hassle. A family of four with two teenage kids, seem to rack up a phone bill second to none! So parents try to sort out who spends what, and how much pocket money the kids owe them. Not to mention time spend surfing the net on a landline. C’mon Telkom. You own half of Vodacom…

Update: - I received my first electronic statement today, and its absolutely brilliant! Mind you, the amount of javascript used to create the statement is pretty scary. You can sort the document by any of the headers, and all you do to seperate business calls from personal, is flag a number as personal, and its sorted! You can also export the statement to CSV for all those Excel lovers out there. :-) Big thumbs up Vodacom!