As seen in the January 4, 2010, COMPTEL Connection

Equinox Information Systems
Headquarters Location: Nashville, TN
www.equinoxis.com

Q: What does your company do and how long has it been in operation?
A: Serving telecommunications companies since 1986, Equinox Information Systems is a trusted vendor partner, selected by more than 300 companies to provide critical back office functionality, including mediation and usage analytics for fraud management, revenue assurance and network monitoring.

With a focus on Tier 2 and smaller companies, we serve a wide variety of customers: emerging carriers and established providers, fixed line and wireless, retail and wholesale, facilities-based and resale, local and long distance, domestic and international, TDM and VoIP, POTS and cable.

Our solutions can be scaled and configured to work for any company, of any size, with any network architecture.

Q: To what do you attribute your company’s success in the communications industry?
A: Experience and focus.  For more than 23 years we have focused our efforts on providing specific tools to a specific segment of the market.   All of our applications are developed in partnership with customers to address proven business needs.  We have continued to evolve our solutions based on feedback from our customers, ensuring that each new feature and function provides true value for our existing customers, and makes our products even more attractive to prospective customers.

The average tenure of our staff is more than 13 years, so we have an established seasoned team.  Across the board from sales to development to implementation to support our staff has the knowledge and experience that can only come from years of working with customers in the same market.

Q: What have been the biggest obstacles your company has faced in the marketplace?
A: As a Tier 2 vendor, it is sometimes difficult to compete with the “flash” of larger vendors, especially in years past when new, venture-funded entrants came into the marketplace.  However, our long history, extensive customer base and proven results have allowed us to overcome this challenge successfully, and maintain a history of success and growth.

Q: What do you see as your greatest challenges going forward?
A: In terms of our solutions, we are working daily with new and existing customers to help them manage the large volume of diverse data they need to analyze as they seek to identify opportunities to reduce costs and increase revenues.

In terms of continuing to grow our business, our biggest challenge is to find ways to communicate our story to the marketplace as we seek to identify new customers in need of time-tested, market proven solutions scaled for small and mid-sized carriers.

Q: What have been some of your company’s most recent achievements (new customer wins, new service/product deployment, etc.)?
A:

• Developing a comprehensive switch to CABs billing revenue assurance platform in partnership with Consolidated Communications
• Enhancing our mediation offering for wireless carriers through an implementation with MTPCS/Cellular One
• Adding fraud management to the mediation and reporting tools deployed at Cavalier Telephone
• Adding mediation to the reporting and fraud management solutions deployed at AmericaTel
• Extending our relationship with CenturyTel by extending our fraud management solution across the Embarq network after their merger
• Adding new customers such as DeltaCom, Fairpoint, Telekenex, SNIP, and ANPI
• Extending our presence in Mexico and the Caribbean with customers such as G-Tel, Alestra, TeleBermuda, and TeleBarbados
• Sustaining annual growth of 15 percent to 20 percent.

Q: Why is it important for your company to be a COMPTEL member?
A: The annual COMPTEL PLUS shows are the one place we can go and count on seeing dozens of existing customers and meeting new prospects in our target market.