CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO — TelePacific Communications (Booth 819 and a Signature Sponsor) is undergoing a massive rebrand.

The Los Angeles-based company is now named TPx, a change that signals a shift in services and a shift in geography.

Making the announcement Tuesday at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Ken Bisnoff, senior vice president of strategic opportunities, says his company wants to be known as a managed services carrier — and a national one. The privately held organization has existed since 1998, and Bisnoff said a rebrand was necessary to reflect the changing era.

“We’re not the company we used to be. We’ve really transformed our business. In the past our origin was out of a Competitive Local Exchange Company – a CLEC – and that’s a term that really has become a part of history, [like] Blockbuster or Kodak cameras,” he said. “It was once wonderful and mainstream, and it’s just really not a part of who we are today.”

Bisnoff said the phrase “Tele” in TelePacific suggested a voice-centric approach that is no longer the bread-and-butter of TPx.

“We’re no longer focusing on the connection part of the business. We’re focusing on managed services for customers and really leveraging that suite of unified communications, managed IT, complex WAN solutions that now transform boundaries and enable us to service/support customers with the quality and reliability and accountability that people know and trust in us,” he said.

Moreover, “Pacific” reflected a geographic presence that the company has expanded past, Bisnoff said. He noted that while the brand was extremely strong on the West Coast and even in Texas (where the company has established several offices), it couldn’t carry the company on a national level.

Bisnoff said some on the West Coast partners warned about changing the name.

“They said, ‘You need to be very careful of any name change that you do,’ and we didn’t take that likely. But we did feel that the time was right to make that change,” he said.

TelePacific, which generates roughly half of its business through the channel, first hinted at its national expansion plans when it acquired DSCI last year. Bisnoff said he received a phone call from PlanetOne Ted Schuman following the DSCI purchase. TelePacific had not done a direct relationship with the master agent, despite enjoying cordial relations.

“The day after the deal closed, he called me,” Bisnoff said. “We had an agreement about a month later, and we’re now off and running and working with his partners and working on deals that fall under the umbrella of who TPx is today.”

DSCI will share the new name. TPx said its agents will not see changes in their current relationships, but TPx partners will now be connected to more national master agents. Bisnoff said TPx plans to expand its geographic presence, with the exact location to be determined.