VoIP Consolidation

One VoIP acquires another and the combined package enables even more services. But are businesses ready to take advantage of what's on offer?

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 3, 2005]

Las Vegas, N.V-based CommPartners offer VoIP services from its facilities-based network. Recently, the company acquired Red Oak, Tex.-based privately held reseller specialist TxLink.

The acquisition gives CommPartners a provisioning system that will help it serve smaller customers including ISPs, VoIP providers, specialist phone companies, and webhosts. "We now have an automated portal on a segregated section of the web site that will enable us to reach more customers such as smaller carriers and ISPs," says Dave Clark, CommPartners president, CEO, and co-founder.

CommPartners serves many different markets, all of which are facing extreme price competition caused by VoIP.

Carriers that specialize in a particular ethnicity, talking to people in their own language, offering those living in North America a cheap way to call home, are facing extreme pricing pressure, Clark says. The company has a prepaid platform that assigns phone numbers and does billing and authentication for phone cards for such companies. "They come to us because they're getting squeezed," Clark notes.

The company can enable providers to offer sophisticated services to businesses. "Salespeople can have find me follow me, voice mail over e-mail, can have their office phone number ring on their cell phone, and more," Clark says. He has his work number ring on his cell phone at all hours, and after business hours, his home phone also rings through to his cell phone.

CommPartners uses Gaithersburg, Md.-based VoIP software provider BroadSoft's system. "When we buy one seat from BroadSoft, we get more features than we'll ever use," says Clark. "We use our OSS to break it up and reconfigure it into the features that businesses want to buy."

Being a CLEC is vital to the VoIP operation. "Origination is now as open as broadband," says Clark. "However, termination is still locked in the good ol' boy network. Also, if you're a CLEC, you get to be a party in the Local Number Portability (LNP) system. You do not want to be a third party in that system. And you need to be a CLEC for white page listings."

Purple apps
Last year, we published Jeff Pulver's challenge to ISPCON attendees to create what he calls purple apps (see Pulver Says the Future is Purple). Pulver said that VoIP would never be able to compete as merely a replacement of a phone line at a lower price. Instead, VoIP enables applications, all sorts of things that traditional voice simply cannot do. And CommPartners is working on it.

The company is developing a hosted call center application that is IP-based. "We see a market for a call center type app, made available to small businesses," says Clark.

CommPartners is interested in fixed-mobile convergence.

CommPartners can write applications that end users desire, but that's taking up so much time that Clark is considering setting up a subsidiary to handle it. Sounds like a good idea to us. For example, a client wanted to know how long messages sat in voice mail at its customer service center—and wanted separate data for each call center operator. VoIP can do this, but writing an app like that is not a trivial undertaking. "It took us a couple of days," says Clark.

Structural barriers
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of selling a disruptive technology like VoIP is that some people within a potential client see it as their job to prevent adoption. Mark Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing, explains.

"We've all heard the story of the company that has some poor old phone guy trying to hang on to his gig while some young buck in IT wants to show the world what he can do with VoIP, but that's not the only problem we've had. We've been in dialogue with some larger companies for a year and a half, talking about the migration path and other issues, and in some cases, we've been through personnel changes at the client more than once. Some companies do have an active CIO or CTO who controls things, but that's the exception."

Anyone at a company may have an interest in fighting change. "We've even had deals torpedoed by a the receptionist, who is worried about losing a job function."

In any new business, there are challenges and opportunities.

— End