Today at 1:15 p.m., research firm ATLANTIC-ACM will present its Best-in-Class Domestic Wholesale Awards based on the results of ATLANTIC-ACM’s 2008 Long Distance Carrier Report Card, which invites wholesale customers to evaluate the performance of their carriers. ATLANTIC-ACM has done this research since 1995 for the industry.

Customers rated their carriers according to seven service characteristics, including brand (reputation), sales representatives (knowledge, credibility, integrity, responsiveness and consultative ability), provisioning (installation and timeliness), network (reliability and SLAs), customer service (responsiveness, expertise, problem resolution, efficiency), billing (accuracy, dispute resolution, flexibility and timeliness) and overall performance. They also rated the quality and price of products, including 800 termination, outbound 1+, VoIP termination, VoIP interconnection, long-haul packet (ATM and frame relay), long-haul private line in the DS1 and DS3 range, as well as in the OC3 to OC192 range, intercity Ethernet, intercity wavelengths, IP-based WAN, and wholesale wireless products.

ATLANTIC-ACM will give awards for the seven service characteristics, as well as one for voice products, one for voice price, one for data products and one for data price. The companies themselves will be able to announce their winning scores on the specific prod-ucts. Over the 14 years of inviting customers to answer this survey, we have been impressed with the toughness of the votes, the consis-tency of customers admiration for wholesale excellence and the improvements the companies have made in response to their custom-ers’ ratings,” said ATLANTIC-ACM CEO Dr. Judy Reed Smith.

ATLANTIC-ACM www.atlantic-acm.com