News Briefs September 2005

ACC Business, which uses AT&T Corp.s network services and sells exclusively through agents, has named Eduardo Sal Ben-Haim agent manager for Florida. Ben- Haim will support existing agents and contract new ones to sell voice and data services. He also will oversee new sales revenue, order processing and agent training. Ben-Haim reports to AT&T Business executives Toni Perez, sales manager; Ben Ho, national sales manager; and John Baker, president and CEO.

XO Communications Inc. has named Jim Delis president of indirect sales. Delis replaces Rob Westervelt, who has left the company. Delis previously served as XOs vice president of channel marketing, where he oversaw marketing programs for commercial, carrier and indirect sales organizations. As president of indirect sales, Delis will lead sales and strategy initiatives for XOs indirect channel. He reports to COO Wayne Rehberger.

Master agency X4 Communications has hired a new senior vice president of sales. Curt Allen oversees carrier relationships, agency business development and education, new monthly sales, agent managers and national agent base expansion. Allen came to X4 from InterCall, where for the last six years as a manager he has worked with companies including Mass Mutual, John Hancock, MFS and Coca-Cola. He previously sold voice and data services for AT&T Corp.; there he earned the Gold Club Title Award for sales achievement.

Distributor Voda One Corp. is handling final channel assembly on Avaya Inc.s Modular Messaging product, a VoIP-based fax and voice solution. By taking over the final integration, Voda One says it can improve the products time-to-market by 75 percent, in turn shortening the sales cycle and time to revenue for channel partners. Voda One already performs final channel assembly for Avayas Communication Manager IP telephony and TDM servers.

Vonage Marketing, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., has named Brightpoint Activation Services LLC as a master agent. The company will offer its dealers the chance to become authorized Vonage agents, through its Accesspoint Dealer Network program. Those dealers will sell Vonages broadband telephony service plans and approved devices. Brightpoint Activation Services says it has more than 1,800 dealers, agents and others enrolled in its Accesspoint program.

Eschelon Telecom Inc., an aggregator of voice, data and Internet services, as well as business telephone systems, has brought its Elite Partners Agent Program to the Salt Lake City market. The program already was in place in Arizona, California, Colorado and several other, mostly western, states. Potential Elite Partners include telephone systems vendors, telecommunications consultants and other professionals working with end users in the telecom arena.

Bandwidth.com has signed on to resell services from fixed-wireless ISP TowerStream Corp. Bandwidth.com sells VoIP and Internet technologies to companies throughout the United States, and says TowerStream is the first wireless broadband provider it is offering to its clients. TowerStream offers multiple digital voice lines, bandwidth on demand, wireless redundancy, VPNs, disaster recovery, bundled data and video services. The company says the deal gives it access to a new, profitable reseller channel.