VON: Speakeasy tracks VoIP growth

National voice and data provider Speakeasy said it saw rapid growth of both broadband and VoIP service in 2005 and expects even more rapid growth this year in both arenas.

The company also announced plans to offer hosted messaging services via Microsoft Exchange later this year as the third plank is its voice and data service platform for small to mid-sized businesses.

VoIP has become Speakeasy’s fastest growing service, said CEO Bruce Chatterly.

“We grew by six percent in 2004 and by 25% last year,” he said. “This year, we expect 27% growth, and to date, we are dead-on our numbers and ahead of our profitability numbers.”

The company has developed an interesting sales strategy, mining its list of independent IT consults to develop more than 3000 of those individuals as certified VoIP resellers for its service.

“For a lot of them, it was a matter of getting paid for something they were already doing, which was recommending our service,” he said.

Independent consultants who install and service a VoIP customer get an ongoing percentage of revenue from that customer, Chatterly said. One of the side benefits is that the IT consultants are often the ones who built the on-site data LAN infrastructure and are in the best position to know if it can support VoIP, he said.

Speakeasy is trialing the enterprise messaging in its data center, for deployment later this year.

Ironically, Chatterly believes that a general VoIP rollout by the telephone companies would help his company’s sales.

“Our focus group research shows many small businesses are getting more comfortable with VoIP,” he said. “They are just waiting for the phone companies to offer a service, so they know for sure it is ready for prime time. They don’t want to buy from the telephone companies, but they want that comfort level. We think next year will be a major acceleration of VoIP sales.”