RESELLER CHANNEL: News Briefs

Written by Channel
July 31, 2003

Posted: 8/2003

News Briefs

* Vonage in June announced
co-branded partnerships with two cable companies — Armstrong Cable and Advanced
Cable Communications. The deals are a first for the company, which has been
targeting cable companies to resell its digital telephony services over their
installed high-speed lines.

Vonage will offer the cable
companies’ subscribers unlimited local and long-distance calling throughout the
United States and Canada for a flat rate. Armstrong Cable will deploy the
service to its cable TV customers in five states — Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky. Advanced Cable Commun-ications, a
subsidiary of Schurz Communications, will add the service to its cable TV
offering in Coral Springs and Weston, Fla.

* Expertcity Inc. has
announced Covad Communications Co. will resell its Web-based
remote-access service, GoToMyPC Corporate. GoToMyPC Corporate lets users access
files, applications and corporate networks from any location. It is
preconfigured with built-in security controls, including dual-password
requirements and 128-bit AES end-to-end encryption. An Administration Center
offers implementation help and account maintenance. Covad will sell the service
to businesses through its direct sales force.

* Reseller Lightyear
Communications Inc. has rounded up a group of investors, including its
founder and chief executive J. Sherman Henderson, to buy the Louisville,
Ky.-based company for an estimated $33 million in an auction that would have to
be approved through a bankruptcy court. Lightyear has not filed a stand-alone
plan of reorganization to settle its nearly $206 million debt load since it was
forced into bankruptcy more than a year ago. Lightyear has entered a term sheet
with an entity called LY Acquisition LLC. Under the term sheet, LY Acquisition
would acquire the assets of the company and assume certain contracts and leases
for an estimated $33 million. Lightyear’s 200 employees would keep their jobs,
according to a court filing. Other interested parties could outbid LY
Acquisition.

* Intelecom Solutions, a
reseller serving the N.Y. metro area, will implement Info Directions‘
CostGuard.NET to provide end-to-end support for its service offerings including
service creation, order management, product bundling, provisioning, taxation and
billing. In addition, the application’s use of permission-based views
facilitates the real-time exchange of information with customers and channel
members. "The move to CostGuard.NET’s open, Web-based architecture in our
back office was a strategic decision that gives us the ability to remain agile
and exploit today’s multiparty, multiservice sales environment," says Henry
Fiorillo, CFO at Intelecom Solutions.

* UNE-P reseller InfoHighway
Communications has successfully implemented Telution Inc. COMX OSS
software to support its voice and data service offerings for businesses in the
northeastern United States and selected areas of Texas. COMX, Telution’s
customer care, order management and billing software, was deployed to help the
company improve its end-to-end operational processes to better service customers
and reduce the operational costs associated with delivering complex business
customer-focused bundles of voice and data services. InfoHighway offers one-stop
shopping for local and long-distance telephone services, point-to-point data
services, high-speed Internet services and network design.