TelCentris Inc., based in San Diego, has been around since 2006 as a unified communications platform provider. But now the company is branching out. It serves end users with its VoxOx software; businesses with its hosted IP PBX, call center and SIP trunking products; and it wholesales its services to other carriers. The expanded focus has TelCentris itself expanding – it’s getting certified as a CLEC in different parts of the United States, and may well end up in all 50 states. For now, though, it’s starting in the five where it has received regulatory approvals – California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas.
The company is facilities-based, meaning it uses its own softswitches for call-control capabilities, to dampen some of the operating expenses. Still, TelCentris does have to buy some access to ILEC and even CLEC networks to provision its VoIP services, and pay interconnection fees. Nonetheless, executives say the TelCentris business model bypasses most of the onerous costs that burden other CLECs.
xchange’s Kelly Teal, business and regulatory editor, spoke with TelCentris CEO Bryan Hertz about rolling out as a CLEC in a tough economic environment and the company’s plans for growth. Here is the edited transcript of that interview:
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| TelCentris' Bryan Hertz |
XC: Talk about how and why TelCentris is going nationwide in the current economic climate.
BH: It actually allows us to save money and pass savings on to end users, especially in the markets where we have some decent saturation so far. We’re able to save money by not renting a lot of these services from other CLECs and ILECs. We’ve come up with a very cost-effective way of rolling out our CLEC infrastructure, our SS7 network, and as far as the savings there, and part of the reason we can do that, the service delivery platform that we’ve built in-house has TDM capabilities. It’s allowed us to avoid a layer of cost of purchasing some of the other switches out there, be it Sonus or whatever. We have a strategy that allows us to roll out into areas where we have more saturation and typically by the time we pull the trigger, we’re entering a market profitably from day one.
XC: What are your most saturated markets?
BH: A lot of our network is in Southern California – it was the first one that we opened up. The other ones are certain markets in Florida, Texas, New York and Illinois. That’s where we’ve gotten regulatory approval and where a lot of our customer base lies. We’re continuing to roll out in order of states that have largest MSAs. Being nationwide from the beginning essentially, we pick up more business in areas that are more densely populated.
XC: So the goal is all 50 states?
BH: The goal is as many states as really make sense for our business. We’re not sure yet whether it will be all 50. Our plan right now is to address each state on a case-by-case basis. There are about 22 states right now where we are planning on opening. We probably will eventually be in all of them, we’re just not exactly sure of the timing.
