Mitel Expands into Brazil

Mitel®, the trusted innovator in unified IP communications solutions and applications that empower business success, today announced the opening of a new office in Rio de Janeiro to serve the Brazilian market. Mitel also announced the appointment of Paulo Ricardo Pinto as general manager of Brazilian operations.

“There is a significant untapped potential for IP telephony in Brazil, as enterprises are just beginning their IP migration journeys”, explained Ronald Gruia, principal telecom analyst at Frost & Sullivan. According to Gruia, Brazil represents “the largest enterprise market in the CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) region in terms of overall yearly station shipments (including both TDM and IP lines).” Despite the fact that the country currently ranks second behind Mexico in terms of IP penetration, there are positive signs that IP adoption is increasing, thereby making Brazil a “natural next step for Mitel to expand its regional operations in Latin America” added Gruia.

“Brazilian companies now have access to the industry’s premier IP communications platform that unifies business communications,” said Gilles Rousso, Mitel’s vice president for the Caribbean and Latin America. “Providing customers with the benefits of reduced costs, increased operational effectiveness and seamless integration into their business processes exemplify the solutions that Mitel delivers.”

Conscious that its growth is dependent upon building strong channel presence, Mitel is expanding its PARTNERprogram throughout Brazil’s 26 states and the federal district. The Mitel PARTNERprogram offers a suite of programs and promotions which reward partners for their commitment to Mitel and for delivering exceptional customer satisfaction. Two recent additions to Mitel’s Brazilian channel partner community includes Seal Telecom, a leader on IP Voice Conferencing Systems, and Agora Telecom, Latin America’s largest reseller of trunked radio systems.

“Over the last year Mitel has expanded its presence and coverage throughout Latin America by establishing offices and expanding its network of channel partners,” Rousso continued. “As a respected veteran of the local telecommunications industry, Paulo brings an extensive network of industry contacts that will help us to continue to establish a strong presence for Mitel in the Brazilian market.”

Shift Networks Inc. Obtains CCAA Protection

Well, it has happened. Shift Networks has filed for bankruptcy and has obtained CCAA (Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act) Protection. Meaning, they will maintain regular business operations and to continue uninterrupted delivery of services to Shift clients. this being branted until June 7th, 2007.

Quoted from CCNMatthews - May 11, 2007 - "Shift continues to be the pre-eminent provider of small-to-medium business VoIP telephone services in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and Ottawa, experiencing over 300% subscriber growth in fiscal 2006 compared to 2005 and continued adoption of its unique hosted VoIP services."

I can't say that I didn't predict this. As a former employee of a dealer selling the Shift Networks Service exclusively, there were problems from it's initial launch in Vancouver in April 2006. The technology, partnerships and agreements with the incumbent telcos, were not there. Although the incumbents have to play fair, who really wants to give business away, especially recurring revenue-generating business.

Shift Networks started off "strong" by purchasing a ton of discontinued product from a manufacturer leading in the VoIP space. Which allowed them to offer a variety of applications with their packages and charging per seat and pratically giving the hardware away, probably their first mistake. Then delivering dial-tone, services, applications over a DSL service was probably their second. DSL is not the most dependable service with the most reliable uptime. So how was it Shift Guaranteed 99.999% uptime and reliability.

After looking into some options for management tools and greater flexibility, they purchased all new hardware and re-configured the entire data centre hosting more than 12,000 subscribers.

All this is an example of using a service that although works in the "residential" space, is lacking the technology and reliability to have presence in the Business market. On Site hardware converged and deployed properly with your existing data network using local carrier service is what businesses should be looking at. Depending on the size and applications, their ROI could be 8 months to 2 years. Isn't your business worth it?

The VON Europe Spring Expo in Stockholm

IP communication technology is evolving at a rapid pace and the VON Europe Expo, Europe's VoIP industry trade show since 1998, is your best opportunity to see, touch and challenge the latest products and services in IP communications including Voice and Video! Register for the VON Expo to catch the latest thinking & product demos from the IP communications vendor community & do business right on the show floor!

Come join me there, for more information please visit:

http://www.von.com/2007/springEurope_stockholm/html/index.htm