ICG goes for broke with national IP

Englewood, CO-based ICG Communications came to the end of a long, bumpy road this week and set itself on the path of convergence by announcing its intention to deliver a nationwide, IP-based voice and data service called VoicePipe.

With partner VocalData, a provider of hosted IP telephony applications, ICG will offer business customers in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Pueblo a single solution that bundles IP business telephone service, long-distance and high-speed Internet access. The VoicePipe service is delivered across existing access facilities using IP and has the same feature set as most PBXs, key systems or Centrex.

However, ICG claims the total cost of ownership with VoicePipe is 25% less than these services, thanks in part to VocalData, which will supply an array of hosted business telephony features, conferencing applications, and flexible attendant options over its VOISS application platform.

“This is not the tinker-toy VoIP solutions that came out a couple of years ago,” said Michael Kallet, executive vice president of operations and chief technology officer of ICG. “This is a fully-redundant, reliable communications system, including being 911 compliant. And it works with existing analog phones as well as IP phones.”

Over the next six months ICG will expand the offering to the San Francisco Bay area, Southern California, the Ohio Valley, parts of Texas, including Austin, Dallas and Houston. In the southeast, ICG will offer services in Atlanta, GA, Charlotte, NC, Birmingham, AL, and Nashville, TN. Future plans include Chicago, Miami and New York City.

If ICG gets it right this time, avoiding many of the service problems that plagued the company in its earlier efforts, it could mean as much for ICG as it does to the growth of the IP telephony market. The company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, 2002, with a modified plan of reorganization, $25 million in exit financing, $94 million in cash and approximately $205 million in long term and short term debt.

Despite the restructuring, ICG was EBITDA positive at the end of 2001 as well as halfway through 2002 and had six-month revenue of $214 million.

The company may be approximately 1000 employees lighter, but it will be relying on VocalData to help manage the applications. “As leader in hosted IP telephony applications, we are excited about bringing our brand of technology and capability to ICG to allow them to extend a certain kind of value to their business customers, [regarding] cost, control and convergence,” said Mark Whittier, vice president of marketing for VocalData.