Vision was seeing a trend in the market where they were losing new and existing small office business to hosted VoIP. They simply could not compete selling traditional PBX in the 10-user-or-less market anymore. Monthly expense vs. capital expense was something that prospects and current customers alike were gravitating towards. Not to mention, there was no factor for the total cost of ownership.

Something needed to change, so Vision went to the lab to create a solution. The result was VisionNET, a hosted service to compete with the competition's much deeper pockets. The cool thing about VisionNET was that it was ours - not a resale venture. Many companies that are VoIP providers simply resell or "white-label" services. When there is a problem they can't fix, they depend on others to do the actual work. This creates delays and puts the customer out of service for an extended period of time. We designed our offering from the ground up and therefore control our own destiny - and yours if the need should arise. The soft switch design we started with has been proven over time and is still the basis of what we have in production today.

Our hosted phone solutions started as a very simple concept. They did not support too many features. It was important to us to be able to support the product. Over time, it grew to the feature-rich offering we provide today. When we were new to the market, we were enlightened by the vast difference in VoIP providers and the outlandish claims they made about their products and services. It was interesting to run up against the new competition and beat them at their own game. Our approach was simple - provide the customer with what they need. Sometimes that is not VoIP or it could be a hybrid offering. Our vast background in traditional PBX became a true distinction in the market. Customers realized that we could provide them with a true solution to their problems. Our sales staff was not just an order taker and our service staff did far more than rack and stack hardware, and then leave. It was interesting to see the VoIP venture come full-circle and customers coming back to PBX at times. Either way, we were happy to provide either solution.

As VCT grew, there were some issues that needed to be addressed. The number one issue with hosted VoIP, or any Voice over Internet Protocol offering, is the quality of the connection. We knew we could take our product to the enterprise level, but we had to overcome potential quality issues before we did so. Most hosted providers will skirt the fact that a poor or shared internet connection will be problematic for voice. However, we will tell you right up front that it is the key to success. Taking our service from hosted, to providing Analog, PRI and SIP service, needed better transport options that would support QoS (Quality of Service). The only way to get what we wanted was to build it, so that is what we did.

VCT became in ISP (Internet Service Provider). Again, starting small with controlled growth. The motive was simple. Become relevant as an internet provider and gain a better understanding of what it takes to become successful. Once that was understood, we started our most drastic change – to apply for and be granted CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) status with the PUC/FCC. At that time, we changed from a simple VoIP provider to a CLEC, and ultimately formed Vision CTS, LLC. With our new status, we set out to obtain NNI (Network to Network Interface) and Peering Agreements with the larger LEC's (Local Exchange Carrier). In short, this gave us more redundancy, shortest path, larger footprint and most importantly QoS.

We now have an enterprise offering that we can take to our customer base as well as the masses. Dedicated transport via MPLS and fiber gives us the bandwidth and quality to the customer that we need to provide an excellent service. Dedicated circuits that we provision and control, pave the way for high-capacity SIP trunks, PRI and analog offerings and the CLEC that we are today. Controlled growth, stable network and great product services are important. But, if we can't provide knowledgeable and reliable service, we will become nothing in this industry and have few contract renewals. Our service department is second to none, we do not contract or offshore our support. Nor do we hide behind a self-help portal. There is nothing worse than a phone company that you can't call. If you contact us, we will engage. Guaranteed! In the typical sales process today, that conversation seems to be lost on most. But your first experience with a service issue will have you wishing you had asked more questions or done more homework. Poor support is downtime and downtime is money. Outages will happen, that is inevitable. It is how these occurrences are handled that proves who you are.

We have been described as small or "boutique" by our much larger competition. We actually embrace the boutique label and admit we are much smaller than those giant carriers that are lumbering and unwilling to listen or change. We will take boutique over impossible to deal with any day. Whether you have 1 site or 100 sites, we can help with all your voice and data needs. Bring us your challenges and together we will find solutions.