Question: What does it take to build the nation’s first real SMB telco?

Answer: Many people, a lot of money, and a cattle prod.

There are so many ways to skin the cat these days and everyone seems to have their own opinion. When Shift Networks ultimately decided to move away from proprietary technology and make the move to open standards, they relied upon many for guidance and vision. I would hope that my contribution in this regard has had and continues to have a positive impact.

In the early days of planning it was an uphill battle, there were many questions and not a great deal of time to make the right choice. In order to build a network that would truly scale and be commercially reliable and viable is not something you just throw your hat at. There were many unanswered questions, like; “How will we interconnect with our carriers? Well, with SIP of course! “What kind of impact will SIP Peering have on client provisioning and account management? The quick answer: a positive impact! In the end, I feel we did make the right decisions and we are now on final approach as our new network nears customer trial readiness.

Something that is very important to the SMB users is resiliency and reliability. We want to know that our phones will always be on. Just like any other utility. When we walk into our offices and hit the light switch, the power should come on. This new network has some great geographical redundancy built into the core and at the premise there will be IP link failover. I am not sure that I have seen anything like it.

The edge of the network demands intelligence. Choosing the right partner for handsets, softphones, remote call control clients, and SDKs is very important. Thankfully I have some experience in this regard. Our SIP handsets are feature-rich and should not fall short of any SMB user’s expectations. Softphones are in the mix and third-party call control applications that allow you to control your handset from anywhere you can get Internet access will also be supported by the network. E-mail integration, Click-to-Dial contacts, Presence, and Instant Messaging are now all on the map, thanks to open standards.

We have the endpoints, now how do they get the info they need to function in the network. Automatic provisioning is the key. Many VoIP providers underestimate the time it takes to provision an IP handset. Let’s say it takes just a couple of minutes to provision a handset, multiply that times the number of users and we are now looking at a huge issue! Combine that with inventory stocking and the whole thing starts looking quite ominous. Our goal here is to provide a no-touch provisioning system so that the phones are drop-shipped directly to client sites. The client plugs the phone into the local network and voila! Everything just works. As we get closer to our production network roll, we should see this new provisioning methodology really take form.

What about sales and marketing? How will we bring these new services to market? Well, thankfully we have a very competent group in charge of those efforts. As long as I meet my objectives and we deliver on our network milestones we can expect a smooth ride during our trials and production network rollout. From what I have seen of the marketing plan, the message is fairly straightforward and I think all those SMBs out there will certainly get it.

I also think the ILECs and their ilk have a wake-up call coming. The alarm clock will be playing The Greg Kihn Band’s Breakup Song, and yes, that volume knob — it goes to eleven!

Erik Lagerway is chief technology officer at Shift Networks. For more information, please visit www.shiftnetworks.com.