* NEC Unified Solutions to support Level 3 VoIP resellers
NEC Unified Solutions will support resellers of Level 3 Communications’ VoIP service with turnkey systems as well as integration and professional services designed to make it easier for enterprises to roll out IP telephony applications. NEC and Level 3 announced their VoIP alliance on Dec. 6.
NEC Unified Solutions will support resellers of Level 3 Communications’ VoIP service with turnkey systems as well as integration and professional services designed to make it easier for enterprises to roll out IP telephony applications. NEC and Level 3 announced their VoIP alliance on Dec. 6.
Level 3 offers its (3) Tone Business VoIP service to enterprise customers through more than 100 resellers. Under the terms of the agreement, NEC will become a preferred provider of CPE fulfillment services to Level 3’s (3) Tone Business VoIP partners in North America.
NEC competed against other communication service providers to win the Level 3 alliance.
“NEC Unified Solutions has a distinguished history of providing innovative communications solutions to businesses,” Andrew Crouch, senior vice president of Channel-Ready Services for Level 3 said in a statement. “Level 3 and NEC will collaborate closely to provide enterprise customers and Level 3 resellers with unmatched VoIP solutions, provisioning and support.”
NEC will offer these resellers and their customers its IP communications products and services including site surveys, IP assessments, implementation and installation, monitoring and management. NEC has experience integrating VoIP equipment from Cisco, Polycom and other leading network equipment vendors.
The NEC/Level 3 alliance is designed to benefit enterprise buyers of Level 3’s services by speeding up their VoIP deployments and reducing the amount of custom integration they require.
“What we’re doing is providing a Henry Ford rapid assembly line for IP technology,” says Charlie Langdon, senior vice president of sales for NEC Unified Solutions. “We’ll be offering fixed price, fixed scope solutions that can enable the channel to sell VoIP into the marketplace.”
NEC has not announced particular Level 3 resellers that it is doing business with under the new alliance. “We are working on several very large RFPs that we hope to see awarded early in the first quarter,” Langdon says.
As an example, Langdon pointed to a VoIP bid that NEC is working on with a company that leases office space. The company, which has 30,000 locations worldwide, is looking to provide customer premise equipment, Internet access and transport to its customers. Level 3, NEC Unified and a reseller are working on the deal together.
“Today VoIP deployments involved customized scopes and customized processes,” Langdon says. “We’re trying to put that into a cookie-cutter situation, where we can offer best-in-breed solutions at much lower price points.”
