Discover Your Place in the New VoIP Ecosystem

“Clearly, no single player has in any scale the key elements to do it on [his or her] own,” said Rich Grange, rather plainly explaining the emergence of the new VoIP ecosystem. Grange is CEO of New Global Telecom Inc., a wholesale provider of VoIP services and a panelist in today’s discussion about The New Ecosystem. As part of the conference’s Business Track today, The New Ecosystem comprises three sessions, beginning with “Strategic Considerations” at 8:30 a.m. and continuing with “Unlocking the Margins in the Business Marketplace” at 9:45 a.m. and “Over-Delivering the Customer Experience” at 11 a.m.

The “key elements” Grange refers to range from distribution channels and network infrastructure to back office, and customer care to applications to CPE installation.

Each service provider — which can be thought of as the integration point for these elements — comes to the table with various components in hand. Because there are a range of delivery models and disparate core competencies among companies at various stages of development, the VoIP environment is ripe for ecosystem dynamics, said Grange.

This “sum is greater than the parts” approach is gaining momentum within the competitive community.

While market-driven and organically grown, the VoIP ecosystem also has its champions in vendors that are assembling complementary technology and service partnerships around their own offers. The idea here is to make sure their systems can integrate or interoperate more or less out-of-the-box or that their business processes are compatible to shorten service providers’ go-to-market steps.

By creating similar alliances, service providers are seeking to deliver a high-quality service on a repeatable basis to help drive end-user adoption, said Craig Schlagbaum, vice president of partner development for Level 3 Communications Inc., another panelist in The New Ecosystem discussion.

“At the end of the day, the end user gets a good experience with VoIP,” said Schlagbaum, citing the ultimate purpose of the VoIP ecosystem. “Without that, the whole thing falls apart.”

COMPTEL PLUS conference attendees can find out more about The New Ecosystem, how they can participate, drive ARPU, reduce attrition and provide end-to-end service delivery in today’s seminars, which also feature Jim Johnson, director of product management for Pac-West Telecomm Inc.; Don MacNeil, vice president of carrier services for XO Communications Inc., Mike O’Neill, vice president and group publisher of The Telecom Intelligence Group; John Guillaume, vice president of sales and marketing for New Global Telecom; John Macario, CEO of Savatar; Mark Richards, president and founder of VoX Communications Corp.; Chris Reese, president and CEO of i3 Networks; Geoffrey Drayton, vice president of sales for DecisionOne Corp.; David Norman, CEO of Edgewater Networks Inc.; Frank Peregrine, chairman of CustomCall Data Systems Inc.; and Ron Whaley, vice president of sales for OSG Billing Services.

Pac-West Telecomm Inc. www.pacwest.com

XO Communications Inc. www.xo.com

New Global Telecom www.ngt.com

VoX Communications Corp. www.voxcorp.net

DecisionOne Corp. www.decisiononecorp.com

Edgewater Networks Inc. www.edgewaternetworks.com

Custom Call Data Systems Inc.  www.customcall.com

OSG Billing Services www.osgbilling.com

Level 3 Communications Inc. www.level3.com

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