Wireless Telcorp partners with Vonage for telephony services

Fixed wireless broadband provider Wireless Telcorp entered into a private label partnership this week with Vonage that allows the company to bundle IP telephony service with its enterprise wireless service.

Wireless Telcorp will begin offering Vonage-based IP telephony in its Las Vegas market around March 1. The carrier hopes to roll out the local and long-distance service in other markets 30 to 60 days after that. In addition to Las Vegas, Wireless Telcorp’s other markets include Dallas, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Va., three markets in south Florida and one in North Carolina.

"We have no ambitions of being a nationwide wireless broadband company," said Larry Simmons, CEO of Wireless Telcorp. "We strictly operate in Tier II markets in the business enterprise arena and we want to offer bundled service no different than cable and telco companies."

Simmons said his company may not go for the triple play, but does plan on offering some video services such as video conferencing.

Wireless Telcorp currently is serving several thousand customers across its markets and plans to offer discount pricing for unlimited local and long-distance calling to its broadband wireless customers as well as resell private label Vonage service to any broadband user. It also will offer all of Vonage’s five current flat-rate price plans for small business and residential customers.

"Vonage is a nationwide company and they have done an excellent job with the pricing model," Simmons said. ‘We could have done what Vonage is doing in our individual markets, but we didn’t want to get into that side of the business. It would have taken our focus off of wireless broadband."

Simmons’ former company, CUE Paging, had developed its own voice-messaging platform several years ago.

In other VoIP news, Net2Phone Global Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Net2Phone, Inc., and Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago today announced a two-year exclusive agreement to market a suite of co-branded retail services in Trinidad and Tobago using Net2Phone's hosted VoIP platform. Net2Phone will work in conjunction with TSTT to deliver VoIP calling cards, including prefix dialing services, (similar to 10-10 services in the US), and Internet telephony call shop services.