Telarus
Encyclopedia
Telarus, Inc. is a national sales agency that holds contracts with many commercial telecommunication carriers. Telarus consolidates the sales volume of hundreds of independent sales agents. As a master agent
Telarus functions as the top layer in the 2-tier distribution model that is prevelent in indirect sales of business voice and data services. Members of the Telecom Association voted Telarus the best master agent in 2008, 2009, and 2010, because of its ability to write software that eliminates manual labor from the sales process.
Currently Telarus carries contracts with the following business telecom providers: AboveNet
, AT&T
, ACC Business, Airband, AireSpring, Broadview, Comcast
, Level 3 Communications
, GTT, Integra Telecom
, MegaPath, New Edge Networks (Earthlink
Business), Netwolves, Nitel, One Communications, PAETEC, PowerNet Global, RealLinx, Qwest
, Smoothstone, TelePacific, Telnes, TelX, Time Warner Cable
, tw telecom, XO Communications
, and Windstream.
History=
Telarus, Inc. was founded in June 2002 in Huntington Beach, California
by Adam Edwards and Patrick Oborn. From the beginning, the focus of the company was to service commercial telecommunications clients faster, better, and more efficiently than anyone else. Not having any financial backing to speak of, Edwards and Oborn set out to build Telarus, Inc. on their own with only a belief in themselves and a hope that their savings accounts wouldn't run dry before operational income could pay the bills. To keep bills low, Edwards and Oborn initially operated out of a small apartment in hopes of one day moving into a "real" office.
Both Edwards and Oborn enjoy surfing
, which they did regularly at Huntington Beach and San Clemente
. During their surf sessions they would discuss the nascent businesses needs and challenges of Telarus. They wanted to build a world-class master agency, but without outside financing or carriers referring new agents to them - combined with the entry-level commissions they were earning, they needed a new and unique approach. They decided to begin building the business simply, making sales on their own and re-investing the commissions they earned back into the company.
Patrick Oborn generated leads using his web and search engine marketing
skills on sites such as ShopforT1.com. Edwards followed up on each lead, contacted the T1 carrier
for pricing, and complied each quote by hand, one at a time.
In 2003 Telarus put together an agent program that allowed agents of different skill sets to participate in the commercial sales process. Edwards and Oborn came up with the idea for "Lead Generator
" agents who could specialize in Internet and offline marketing, "Product Specialists" who could focus on following up on the leads created by the Lead Generators, and GeoQuote, the world's first real-time T1 pricing software.
By dividing up the sales process into 1) Marketing
and 2) Follow-up/Consulting, along with software that allowed this process to take place - Telarus was able to create a system which could sift through hundreds of new leads a day without burdening agents with the task of researching and generating proposals for clients. Lead Generators attract new visitors to their sites using the GeoQuote real-time quote tool, and the Product Specialists receive the lead on the back end, after the prospect has seen pricing. Often times customers will remove themselves from the system after learning that a T1 line is $250 – $700/month, a price many businesses can't afford to pay. This saves countless hours of productivity and allows Product Specialists, all who are paid solely on a commission
basis, to focus their time on customers who qualify and are ready to purchase service.
, Telarus moved to Draper, Utah
in 2004. Once there, new employees were hired to help maintain the technology that powers GeoQuote and the agent back offices, as well as agent sales support personnel that assist Product Specialists in their day to day sales activities. With these new employees, Telarus has been able to proactively find and recruit many top Master Agents, individual consultants, systems integrators, and VARs
into the company. In 2010 Telarus agents turned in over $3,200,000 in new carrier contracts.
On May 20, 2011, Telarus changed offices again and is now headquartered in the Centennial Plaza Tower, located in Sandy, Utah.
, designed the initial concept for GeoQuote - a software that allows a user to access multiple carrier price options with a single search. In 2003 Oborn partnered with Aaron Lieberman to write the code that could compute pricing based upon loop distance (the distance from the customer's central office to the carrier point of presence) or through direct access to a carrier pricing API interface.
The prototype of GeoQuote was completed in August 2003. The software was embedded in Telarus' public-facing real-time price research tool called ShopforT1.com. The names of the carriers are removed in the public-facing version of GeoQuote to protect the sales agent from losing the sale by virtue of the customer calling the carrier direct.
In November of that same year, Telarus, Inc. filed for a United States provisional patent to protect the idea and coding architecture behind the GeoQuote concept. On September 30, 2004 Telarus filed the non-provisional patent
application, which was accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on February 24, 2009. GeoQuote is now protected by US Patent Number(s) 7,496,184 and 7,916,844
As of March 30, 2011, GeoQuote can provide pricing of the following telcom products: cable high-speed internet, business DSL, data T1, bonded T1, data DS3, wireless 3G
, local voice / PRI, integrated voice/data, integrated SIP
, long distance T1/DS3, and Ethernet over copper. Fiber maps have been subsequently added to allow Telarus agents to see the path the fiber
takes in an effort to locate the availability of Ethernet broadband services
for their clients.
OTCBB
:XOHO, ACC Business (a division of AT&T
), AireSpring, Nitel, MegaPath, One Communications (recently acquired by Earthlink Business), TelePacific, and Windstream (NYSE: WIN). The site requires registration and users can only see pricing for carriers that have approved access.
using a Microsoft Enterprise SQL
server core from Telx data centers.
Media and Awards=
Telarus, Inc. has enjoyed many awards and recognition for its accomplishments in the telecommunications industry. Some of them include:
Sales outsourcing
- Background :Full 'sales outsourcing' is observed where companies have an external third party sales force. It is differentiated from value added reselling or distribution in that the business model can be based on shared risk, although there are models where the outsourcer is paid for all of...
Telarus functions as the top layer in the 2-tier distribution model that is prevelent in indirect sales of business voice and data services. Members of the Telecom Association voted Telarus the best master agent in 2008, 2009, and 2010, because of its ability to write software that eliminates manual labor from the sales process.
Currently Telarus carries contracts with the following business telecom providers: AboveNet
AboveNet
AboveNet, Inc. , provides high bandwidth connectivity primarily for large corporate enterprises and communications carriers. AboveNet operates private metro area and long haul optical networks, and offers services including high bandwidth metro access to WDM, Metro Ethernet, VPN and IP networks,...
, AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, ACC Business, Airband, AireSpring, Broadview, Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications is a telecommunications and Internet service provider headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado.It operates a Tier 1 network. The company provides core transport, IP, voice, video and content delivery for most of the medium to large Internet carriers in North America and Europe...
, GTT, Integra Telecom
Integra Telecom
Integra Telecom is a privately owned, facilities-based, integrated telecommunications carrier and communications equipment provider headquartered in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1996, the company is one of the largest competitive local exchange carriers in the United States and...
, MegaPath, New Edge Networks (Earthlink
EarthLink
EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...
Business), Netwolves, Nitel, One Communications, PAETEC, PowerNet Global, RealLinx, Qwest
Qwest
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a large United States telecommunications carrier. Qwest provided local service in 14 western U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.On April...
, Smoothstone, TelePacific, Telnes, TelX, Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
, tw telecom, XO Communications
XO Communications
XO Communications is a telecommunications company owned by XO Holdings, Inc...
, and Windstream.
History=
Telarus, Inc. was founded in June 2002 in Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County in Southern California. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 189,992; making it the largest beach city in Orange County in terms of population...
by Adam Edwards and Patrick Oborn. From the beginning, the focus of the company was to service commercial telecommunications clients faster, better, and more efficiently than anyone else. Not having any financial backing to speak of, Edwards and Oborn set out to build Telarus, Inc. on their own with only a belief in themselves and a hope that their savings accounts wouldn't run dry before operational income could pay the bills. To keep bills low, Edwards and Oborn initially operated out of a small apartment in hopes of one day moving into a "real" office.
Both Edwards and Oborn enjoy surfing
Surfing
Surfing' is a surface water sport in which the surfer rides a surfboard on the crest and face of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore...
, which they did regularly at Huntington Beach and San Clemente
San Clemente, California
San Clemente is a city in Orange County, California. The population was 63,522 at the 2010 census. Located on the California Coast, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego at the southern tip of the county, it is known for its ocean, hill, and mountain views, a pleasant climate and its Spanish...
. During their surf sessions they would discuss the nascent businesses needs and challenges of Telarus. They wanted to build a world-class master agency, but without outside financing or carriers referring new agents to them - combined with the entry-level commissions they were earning, they needed a new and unique approach. They decided to begin building the business simply, making sales on their own and re-investing the commissions they earned back into the company.
Patrick Oborn generated leads using his web and search engine marketing
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing, , is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion...
skills on sites such as ShopforT1.com. Edwards followed up on each lead, contacted the T1 carrier
T-carrier
In telecommunications, T-carrier, sometimes abbreviated as T-CXR, is the generic designator for any of several digitally multiplexed telecommunications carrier systems originally developed by Bell Labs and used in North America, Japan, and South Korea....
for pricing, and complied each quote by hand, one at a time.
Realization of a New Business Model
It didn't take long before Edwards and Oborn became bogged down with the slow and cumbersome process of gathering information for prospective customers. From his experience as the web master of Cognigen, Patrick Oborn recognized the potential of an automated sales process and he became convinced that he and Adam Edwards could do the same for commercial telecom pricing research.In 2003 Telarus put together an agent program that allowed agents of different skill sets to participate in the commercial sales process. Edwards and Oborn came up with the idea for "Lead Generator
Lead generation
Lead generation, or lead gen is a marketing tool used, particularly in internet marketing, to generate consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be generated for a variety of purposes - list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for winning customers....
" agents who could specialize in Internet and offline marketing, "Product Specialists" who could focus on following up on the leads created by the Lead Generators, and GeoQuote, the world's first real-time T1 pricing software.
By dividing up the sales process into 1) Marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
and 2) Follow-up/Consulting, along with software that allowed this process to take place - Telarus was able to create a system which could sift through hundreds of new leads a day without burdening agents with the task of researching and generating proposals for clients. Lead Generators attract new visitors to their sites using the GeoQuote real-time quote tool, and the Product Specialists receive the lead on the back end, after the prospect has seen pricing. Often times customers will remove themselves from the system after learning that a T1 line is $250 – $700/month, a price many businesses can't afford to pay. This saves countless hours of productivity and allows Product Specialists, all who are paid solely on a commission
Commission (remuneration)
The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold...
basis, to focus their time on customers who qualify and are ready to purchase service.
Move to Utah
After three years of operations in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Telarus moved to Draper, Utah
Draper, Utah
Draper is a city in Salt Lake and Utah Counties in the U.S. state of Utah, located about south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front. Between 1990 and 2000 Draper was Utah's fastest-growing city over 5,000 people . Its population in 1990 was 7,143 and had grown to 25,220 by the 2000 census...
in 2004. Once there, new employees were hired to help maintain the technology that powers GeoQuote and the agent back offices, as well as agent sales support personnel that assist Product Specialists in their day to day sales activities. With these new employees, Telarus has been able to proactively find and recruit many top Master Agents, individual consultants, systems integrators, and VARs
Value-added reseller
A value-added reseller is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated product or complete "turn-key" solution...
into the company. In 2010 Telarus agents turned in over $3,200,000 in new carrier contracts.
On May 20, 2011, Telarus changed offices again and is now headquartered in the Centennial Plaza Tower, located in Sandy, Utah.
GeoQuote Real-time Pricing
Oborn and Edwards realized soon after getting in to commercial telecom sales that, to achieve scale, automation of price quoting was required. In 2002, Oborn, who studied electrical and computer engineering at Brigham Young UniversityBrigham Young University
Brigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...
, designed the initial concept for GeoQuote - a software that allows a user to access multiple carrier price options with a single search. In 2003 Oborn partnered with Aaron Lieberman to write the code that could compute pricing based upon loop distance (the distance from the customer's central office to the carrier point of presence) or through direct access to a carrier pricing API interface.
The prototype of GeoQuote was completed in August 2003. The software was embedded in Telarus' public-facing real-time price research tool called ShopforT1.com. The names of the carriers are removed in the public-facing version of GeoQuote to protect the sales agent from losing the sale by virtue of the customer calling the carrier direct.
In November of that same year, Telarus, Inc. filed for a United States provisional patent to protect the idea and coding architecture behind the GeoQuote concept. On September 30, 2004 Telarus filed the non-provisional patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
application, which was accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on February 24, 2009. GeoQuote is now protected by US Patent Number(s) 7,496,184 and 7,916,844
As of March 30, 2011, GeoQuote can provide pricing of the following telcom products: cable high-speed internet, business DSL, data T1, bonded T1, data DS3, wireless 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
, local voice / PRI, integrated voice/data, integrated SIP
Session Initiation Protocol
The Session Initiation Protocol is an IETF-defined signaling protocol widely used for controlling communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol . The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party or multiparty sessions...
, long distance T1/DS3, and Ethernet over copper. Fiber maps have been subsequently added to allow Telarus agents to see the path the fiber
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...
takes in an effort to locate the availability of Ethernet broadband services
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
for their clients.
Public License of GeoQuote
On March 14, 2010, Telarus, Inc. launched a new web site for the public use of its GeoQuote software: www.CarrierQuoteShop.com. The site is powered by GeoQuote and financially backed by telecommunication carriers: XO CommunicationsXO Communications
XO Communications is a telecommunications company owned by XO Holdings, Inc...
OTCBB
OTC Bulletin Board
The OTC Bulletin Board or OTCBB is an interdealer electronic quotation system in the United States that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter equity securities that are not listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange or a national securities exchange...
:XOHO, ACC Business (a division of AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
), AireSpring, Nitel, MegaPath, One Communications (recently acquired by Earthlink Business), TelePacific, and Windstream (NYSE: WIN). The site requires registration and users can only see pricing for carriers that have approved access.
Hardware
GeoQuote and the balance of Telarus' redundant network runs in Adobe Cold FusionAdobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
using a Microsoft Enterprise SQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
server core from Telx data centers.
Media and Awards=
Telarus, Inc. has enjoyed many awards and recognition for its accomplishments in the telecommunications industry. Some of them include:
| Year | Organization | Award |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Comcast Comcast Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the... Business |
First Channel Partner |
| 2010 | tw telecom | Top Master Agent |
| 2010 | Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications is a telecommunications and Internet service provider headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado.It operates a Tier 1 network. The company provides core transport, IP, voice, video and content delivery for most of the medium to large Internet carriers in North America and Europe... |
Top Direct Agent (West) |
| 2010 | Telecom Association | Top Master Agent |
| 2010 | Windstream (NYSE: WIN) | Top Agent |
| 2010 | MegaPath | Top Agent |
| 2010 | Telnes | Top Agent |
| 2010 | PHONE+ Magazine PHONE+ magazine PHONE+ is a monthly trade publication for communication distribution channels providing news and strategic information to private-label resellers, agents, brokers, VARs, systems integrators, interconnects and dealers that deliver bundled voice, data, wireless, Internet and content services, and... |
Top Channel Manager - Michael Gottwalt |
| 2010 | PHONE+ Magazine PHONE+ magazine PHONE+ is a monthly trade publication for communication distribution channels providing news and strategic information to private-label resellers, agents, brokers, VARs, systems integrators, interconnects and dealers that deliver bundled voice, data, wireless, Internet and content services, and... |
Top 50 Channel Program |
| 2007 | Covad | Top Agent |