Covad, which a few months back acquired GoBeam to fill their VoIP pipe has announced that they will start selling VoIP in the Colorado Front Range, commencing first in the Denver marketplace.
For Covad, this means they can start to get past the 250 or so installations GoBeam reportedly has, and the roughly 15,000 installed seats that were in place according to informed sources.
One has to think though just how good the platform Covad acquired, as ex-employees have repeatedly stated that even the VC’s who invested in GoBeam refused to deploy the system.
Despite all that, I’m somewhat excited about what the future is for the Covad VoIP play. Here’s why:
1) They become the first major CLEC to make a big play with VoIP for the office customer. AT&T already is in this space, but has been making more noise about their consumer offering, CallVantage.
2) Their experience at attracting a customer base
3) A proven DSL platform which should easily support VoIP
4) GoBeam was built to pair with Sylantro’s Application server, which may be the strongest in the market
5) A real replacement for PBX. This makes Covad a direct threat to the RBOCs and allows them to target Centrex based customers with better features.
6) The vPBX is real, tested and functional. Clearly they and CallTower will battle for the customers in this space. GloPhone may also challenge, but details about their offering are still not yet clear to me. I do expect to get a briefing from one of their executives shortly.
7) The platform is SIP based
Unfortunately, no pricing was announced. Instead they want interested customers to fill out a web based form or call.