Looking for a serverless VoIP product? Look no further than Nuvio, which provides the CPE as well.

by ISP-Planet Staff [June 21, 2004]

Kansas City, Mo.-based Nuvio offers a VoIP solution for business and residential users.

"The solution was originally developed to connect two law offices," explains Brandon Fuhr, Nuvio's director of business development. The founders decided that their solution was so good, it could sell.

It's a new company. "The solution was made commercially available in December, and we turned on the first customer in January."

Although the company is still selling its product direct to end users, Fuhr says the company is phasing out all direct sales. "We did sell service direct, but that is going away."

He says that the direct purchase option on the website will go away soon, and the company will sell exclusively through partners. The thinking behind the decision to phase out direct sales is all about service—Nuvio cannot provide service to every end user in the U.S.

"You need local consulting," says Fuhr. "You need a local company to deal with the local customers."

One of Nuvio's first ISP distributors was Futura Technologies, located near Kansas City, Mo. in Mission, Kan. Josh Garrett, Futura's president and CEO, writes to us by e-mail, "Their private label customer service is excellent and has been able to fully help every customer that has called. We have even had some very troubled situations with customers in Florida and they still came through. We look forward to a long and developing business relationship with Nuvio."

At the moment, the company claims partners in about 15 states, and is talking to more. As it acquires more partners, it is building out its edge infrastrcture.

The core is in an InterNAP data center in Dallas. The edge is servers throughout the company, for area codes in regional markets. "To light up a new market, we need only 300 customers," says Fuhr. "If an ISP can bring 300, we'll light it up for them."

That's the upload side. The company's plan for nationwide connections to the PSTN are more advanced, with CLEC partnerships in 24 states and Washington, D.C., with plans to cover all states before the end of 2004.

Inside the service is proprietary SIP technology, and CPE that the company supplies for free. This might make it tough to switch VoIP vendors, but it also significantly lowers the up front cost of the service.

Pricing and availability
Nuvio is available now to ISPs on a revenue share basis. Fuhr says residential service generally sells for $15 to $35 per month, and business service for $20 to $60 per month. He adds that the percentage given to the ISP is currently aggressive, and will not be available forever.

The company targets companies with up to 100 users. "Once you're over 100 employees, they may want to consider buying their own phone system and phones," Fuhr observes. "A ten employee business sees a lot of cost savings from our solution."

—End