A little professional background on you: 

Started in Telecommunications as an Account Executive with Access Long Distance in Arizona in 1998 selling long distance services to businesses.  The company was then acquired by McLeodUSA where I was involved in rolling out their local products throughout Arizona and building the sales staff.  In 2001 I branched out to start City Communications Integrated with two other partners and since that time we have built up a sizeable customer base including roughly two thousand customers across the United States and a network of about approximately 100 subagents.  I am currently focused on our Telecom Managed Services offerings and helping our customers navigate the technology changes caused by the merging of voice and data networks.

 How did you get into telecommunications? 

I was recruited to sell long distance services to businesses because I seemed like a nice guy and apparently I wasn’t afraid to cold call.

How long ago? 

1998

What are the best and worst parts of working in Telecom? 

Telecom is a messy business.  There are many people within many different companies involved in getting a customer’s voice and data services up and working.  The expectation is that it will work 100% of the time without any issues.  The best part about the job is when we can deliver on that expectation.  The worst part is when we don’t.  Thankfully, there have been many more good days than bad in my 8 years with City.

Where do you see the industry heading? 

 The merging of voice and data services is in overdrive right now.  As the networks continue to get built out and we can provide larger, more stable bandwidth connections to the customers, we will be able to offer more services across those networks.  It’s a very exiting time for innovation and efficiency improvements.

What role does Managed Services play in this? 

As more services become available there is an opportunity to provide those services and also manage the multitude of services avaialble from all of the different vendors.  Business owners generally want to focus on their brand, their products, and their serivces and not on IT and telecommunications services.  This creates an excellent opportunity for us service those needs.

If you had one bit of advice for a customer what would it be?

 Talk to City Communications about your business.  There is no cost or obligation to have a conversation and if we aren’t able to help you out directly, chances are we have contacts with other companies that can.