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?