Comms Dealer

Mark Pearce, strategic alliance director at Enterasys Networks, has slammed the Government's slow progress in rolling out superfast broadband to rural areas of the UK.

An official audit has found that the government's rollout of 'superfast' broadband to rural areas is about two years behind its original schedule.

The report said only nine of 44 rural areas would reach targets for high-speed Internet by 2015, and four areas could also miss a revised 2017 target.

"Accessing fast and reliable broadband is increasingly essential for businesses and schools, and the fact that the rollout in rural areas is two year's behind is simply not good enough," said Pearce.

 "Ofsted recently reported that schools in rural areas are failing their poorest children, and lack of broadband in rural areas surely has a part to play in this.

"The influx of BYOD mobile devices is putting pressure on bandwidth, which schools and businesses are struggling to keep up with. Some rural areas have broadband connections slower than 2Mbps, that's snail's pace in our modern world.

"This is having a knock on affect for both businesses and schools, and in some cases pupils are struggling to do their homework because of insufficient Internet access.

"It's widely known that poor connectivity is creating a digital divide between urban and rural communities and more delays will only result in rural communities falling further and further behind their urban counterparts.

"Superfast broadband is important, not just because of the potential benefits it can bring to both individuals and society but also the role it could play in supporting the central focus of the government: economic growth. Having the fastest Internet in Europe by 2015 is an ambitious target but one that the government needs to hit," added Pearce

ShoreTel's reseller channel is said to be 'buzzing' following the unveiling of the manufacturer's new Mobility 7 software release.
ShoreTel says with Mobility 7, users can transform their iOS iPhone, Android or tablet into a desk phone with the ShoreTel Dock, which is now available for ordering.

David Petts, senior VP of worldwide sales at ShoreTel commented: "Our channel is a buzz of excitement with the customer interest in ShoreTel Mobility and the ShoreTel Dock. With our latest software release, resellers can deliver a fantastic and intuitive experience for end users and IT administrators alike.

"As a result, customers are able to integrate leading smartphones and tablets securely, simply and cost-effectively into existing enterprise communication applications and infrastructure to provide greater flexibility and increased productivity."

Brian Riggs, principal analyst at Ovum commented. "Enterprise end users expect mobile UC clients to be as intuitive and easy to use as consumer apps found on a wide variety of smart phones and tablets. This release increases adoption of UC in the enterprise, helping businesses to derive the most benefit from their IT investments, while reducing training costs, resulting in lower cost UC solutions."

BT Business Partner Sales' General Manager Martin Clarke has reaffirmed his commitment to the channel and recruited additional Partner Managers and specialists with a remit to support 10 new partners who have recently joined the channel.

"Our strategy is to grow the channel and recruit more partners to sell the BT Retail portfolio," said Clarke. "I expect another four high quality partners to come on board early in August."

Terry Hughes, BT's Specialist Sales Manager, added: "We have invested in the Specialist areas of ICT, Calls & Lines, Mobile and Broadband to strengthen the BT Retail proposition and make working with BT an attractive option."
 

OneCom has been named Vodafone UK's Platinum partner of the year.

CEO Darren Ridge and his team received their award at the network giant's partner conference at Manchester's Lowry Hotel.

With headquarters in Fareham, Hampshire, and regional offices located in Camberley, Leeds, Hereford, Birmingham, Southampton and Plymouth, OneCom employs over 200 staff with an annual turnover in excess of £40m.

CommsXchange were named Gold Partner of the Year and Rock Networks collected the Silver Award. Other awards went to Eison (Fixed Data and Internet Partner of the Year) and ITalk (Fixed Voice Partner of the Year).

Rob Mukherjee, Head of Vodafone Partner Services at Vodafone UK, said: "We're fully committed to our channel partners and the Vodafone Partner of the Year Awards is a clear demonstration of that commitment, their achievements and future growth potential."

There was great merriment and forsooth many tales of mighty battles won when knights and maidens from Comstor's Mentor programme assembled at historic Peckforton Castle in Cheshire for their summer partner conference.

Thirty Mentor partners joined up with members of the Cisco commercial team to share best practice ideas during the day and the entire ensemble donned full medieval dress for a spectacular evening dinner. "It was a day to remember," said Comstor's Warwick Taylor.

Fancy a hi-octane day out at the Shakespeare County Raceway near Stratford-upon-Avon on August 24/25/26th?

ISP and VoIP network specialist Stripe 21 is sponsoring the Avon Park International Racing Association Open Sport Nationals, one of the UK's top drag racing events. Everything from super-fast Super Pro dragsters, altereds and doorslammers through to the Sportsman categories will be hitting the quarter mile strip.

"We are in the business of delivering a fast and competitive service and the extreme world of 200 mph head-to-head drag racing certainly captures that with its knife edge competitiveness, power and speed," said Stripe 21 managing director Steve North.

?There are a limited number of tickets available for resellers to come and meet the Stripe 21 team at the event and get involved. For details on how to get your free ticket contact chrissie.fox@stripe21.com

Picture shows Stripe 21's Chrissie Fox getting the lowdown on a supercar from dragster racing veteran Roy Wilding from the S&K racing team.

Cloud specialist Zynstra has launched an enterprise grade hybrid cloud IT solution for SMEs it claims will give resellers high margin recurring revenues.

Sold exclusively through and managed by the channel, the solution is said to give SMEs with up to 250 employees a fully managed IT solution that combines the reliability and security of on-premise IT with the economics and flexibility of the cloud.

Nick East, CEO of Zynstra, told Comms Dealer: "We believe that IT service providers are best positioned to deliver and manage IT for small and medium businesses and that belief is reflected in the way the product was developed. Zynstra comes with all the management tools IT service providers need to easily manage multiple installations. It also has built-in reliability, allowing our partners to focus on value added services, rather than worrying about day-to-day IT management."

Mike Ayres, General Manager of network and hosting service provider Easynet Connect, commented: "Our partnership with Zynstra creates a compelling commercial proposition. By standardising IT, we've made it really easy for them to manage hundreds of customers at any one time and offer a better service and greater flexibility at a lower cost. They are able to deliver the best of the cloud, whilst maintaining the benefits of on-site IT."

Interested resellers can sign up to Zynstra's channel programme directly or through one of Zynstra's partners including Easynet and voxclever. Zynstra says pricing will vary according to the specific package offered by each service provider, but is equivalent to the cost of a typical monthly mobile phone contract per user.

A campaign to push the significance of superfast broadband is being rolled out by Openreach and according to the group's Marketing Director Rob Lee the initiative is already well advanced although, he believes, the full implications of next generation connectivity may not yet be realised by comms providers operating particularly in the SME space.

"CPs who are not engaged in fibre broadband need to be moving into this area because traditional products will be overtaken," warned Lee. "There is a ball-game change for SME and SoHo underway, driven in part by a shift at consumer level but spilling into the business environment."

Lee cited as evidence of this seismic shift the boom in IPTV and on-demand services with a number of important broadband-based TV launches already done; and with Openreach on target to reach two thirds of the population by spring 2014 and on track to hit its 90% coverage target, Lee forecasts a tipping point that will prove pivotal in sifting the fibre-ready CPs from their less able and less competitive rivals.

"Openreach has come a long way in rolling out superfast broadband," added Lee. "And our strategy includes helping CPs of all sizes profit from this revolution in communications."

Openreach has extended its resource of accredited engineers to customers of all descriptions, enabling CPs to white label the group's trained engineers who perform on-site cabling and equipment installation services on their behalf.

A new website, the Fibre for Business Zone, functions as a mobile-friendly resource offering CPs various connectivity options including a mix of Ethernet and optical services through to fibre-based broadband products. The website also details the current offers available to CPs.

Openreach is gearing up to hold two channel webinars (18th-19th September) in association with Comms Dealer exploring the opportunities associated with Superfast Fibre Access for Business.

To register for one of these webinars please contact gemma.thompson@openreach.co.uk

Oak is claiming a breakthrough in telephone call management with the release of EVOLVE, its new real time wallboard and management solution for the Avaya IP Office that operates solely on the web.

Joint CEO Phillip Reynolds, who has masterminded the development of the solution, says it will change the way people run businesses and will give resellers the ultimate call management tool to offer clients.

"Once in a generation something comes along that is so different, so special and so innovative that it will change communications management forever. I believe we have come up with that something," Reynolds told Comms Dealer.

"We needed to understand telephone technologies, Internet technologies, server technologies, database and mobile technologies and we needed to understand them in a unique and all-encompassing way to make them work together seamlessly.

"These challenges were immense but with 25 years of pioneering development behind us we've been able to achieve what many thought would never be possible, a single solution that does everything through the web."

Reynolds says that reseller customers that install EVOLVE will be able to go to any communications device and see in real-time what's happening in their business and call centre, which important customers are waiting for calls to be answered, how quickly teams are answering calls, how many calls sales teams are making and how many missed calls employees have called back to secure more sales.

"Through an intuitive browser interface the EVOLVE software will also monitor the quality and performance of teams anywhere in the world, can listen in to any call and see how well it is being handled, can dramatically improve the closing rate of your calls, can manage agents current status and can even move live calls around between queues," said Reynolds.

"Oak EVOLVE, is both evolutionary and revolutionary and will change the way businesses are run."

Entanet is offering free activation and copper broadband migration on new FTTC orders as part of a three month promo called ‘Free for Three'.

"The campaign runs from 5th August through to 4th November and will give resellers a gilt-edged opportunity to win new business during the early-adopter phase of market uptake," claimed Product Manager Paul Heritage-Redpath.
 
The promotion enables partners to offer new customer activations and migrations by existing customers who are moving from any copper broadband product, including LLU, to FTTC free of charge. "For many customers, these charges often represent an unacceptable barrier to adoption that hampers resellers' success," added Heritage-Redpath.
 
The free activation or migration is being made available on Entanet's entire portfolio of allowance-based and unlimited bandwidth business and consumer products.
 
Heritage-Redpath noted that the promotion will provide channel partners with additional confidence to compete for business against the major retail market players.

"Independent resellers are facing strong competition from the mainstream providers in the UK broadband market and need all the help they can get to win new customers," he added.

"By removing the activation and migration charges for customers moving from a BT or LLU-based copper broadband product with any provider, we're giving resellers a great opportunity to win customers who are looking for a good value and reliable fibre broadband connection."
 
In May the company introduced unlimited BT-based allowance products across its copper and fibre range to help partners attract customers looking for a flexible and straightforward connection at a fixed price. "This latest FTTC promotion is open to all resellers who want the convenience of selling ready-made packages to their customers," said Heritage-Redpath.