This article originally appeared in the Oct. 2011 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY

There’s a lot of talk about innovation in the world of communications these days. But you won’t find Integrated Telemanagement Services Inc. on the leading edge. Instead, the data, voice – and soon-to-be wireless – provider focuses on delivering a high level of customer support and a single bill for multiple services, says Rick Minyard.

 “We don’t make technology, we follow the trends,” says Minyard, executive vice president and minority owner of ITS. “We’re kind of the pinball in the machine.”

ITS may consider itself a pinball in the machine, but it makes sure its customers are not. It does that by allowing them to go through ITS as one point of contact and billing, rather than having to contract with various different service providers and receiving a pile of invoices every month. That’s important, says Minyard, given the typical ITS customer buys services from multiple carriers.

Channel partners of ITS, and the company now relies exclusively on the channel as its go to market, resell the broadband services of such leading carriers as AT&T, CenturyLink (formerly known as Qwest), Covad, Level 3, PAETEC, Sprint and Verizon (News - Alert). VoIP services are also on the ITS menu. The company will soon roll out wireless services, which it is providing through a wholesale relationship with Sprint (News - Alert). Cloud services for backup, storage and recovery also are on the horizon; in fact, ITS already delivers such services to a couple of its customers.

Minyard says that ITS leads with data. “You have to now, you have to. Bandwidth is king,” he says, adding that the company has both copper- and fiber-based connectivity offerings.

So ITS, which got its start 21 years ago as a shared service provider reselling PacBell’s Centrex platform and later transitioned to being a switchless CLEC, has evolved into a multi-faceted solution provider, he says, adding its channel partners include IT professionals, interconnect and cabling vendors, among others.