No matter how long you’ve been in the telecom industry, there are always new lessons to learn – especially when it comes to choosing a UCaaS platform to support a new business line.
Cyprus-based Intergo Telecom has been developing communication solutions since 2016, and has amassed a lot of experience in the SMB and enterprise telecommunications space. In 2023, after a series of restructurings, the Intergo Telecom team was ready to branch out into new sectors.
The company was already managing two successful core platforms – a virtual fax service called Fax.to and a multi-channel messaging service called SMS.to – and now wanted to leverage its technical know-how and mobile operator interconnections to launch a new SIP trunking and DID service under the brand name Telxi. But this time around, they wanted to make sure they’d face fewer delays on the road to growth.
“We made some mistakes in our previous businesses,” says Marios Italos, CEO of Intergo Telecom. When Intergo Telecom launched its first set of services, he explains, the company struggled to find a telecom switch supplier that could both deliver reliable service and provide the flexibility to quickly and easily add new features and customers.
“The whole concept of growth had become much more difficult to approach,” Marios recalls. “We had to change the underlying switch three times. That took time away from innovation and into optimizing and making sure everything was ready for scale. So, for Telxi, we wanted to be able to build on a stable core and collaborate with a company that could help us be scalable from day one, so we could reach our goal of serving 100,000 customers within six months. That’s how our collaboration with PortaOne started, and why we chose PortaSwitch.”
Proving the case for PortaOne and the flexible PortaSwitch UCaaS platform
However, Intergo Telecom lacked the same deep knowledge in SIP trunking that it held in other areas. So, the team had to rely on the process of elimination to find the right provider for a UCaaS platform that could scale instantly.
“When you’re not in the market, you can’t compare the different solutions so easily,” says Marios. “You start by comparing cost, but you soon find out that this one cannot do ‘A,’ this one cannot do ‘B,’ this one does not have support, and so on.” But when they looked at PortaSwitch, they found that not only did it meet their budget, it also had the capabilities they would need to be able to customize their offerings for each business customer to meet their specific needs – with options like free DIDs and fixed monthly fees – a level of flexibility that Telxi could also use to add more new services if and when their market’s needs changed. Plus, PortaSwitch had the ability to easily integrate various workflows and third-party systems that would satisfy regional “know-your-customer” regulations, which often require the collection and handling of personal information and other forms of documentation. “It was a no-brainer on paper,” he says.
UCaaS to help you fit your market’s needs
And within a year, notes Marios, PortaSwitch had proven itself. “I think everyone on the team who works with PortaOne can say it was the right decision,” he says. “We have a system that works, and everyone is confident that when they open a ticket, a very experienced team will answer with a thoughtful and well-designed response that we can build on.”
By the time Intergo Telecom was ready to launch its fourth platform – a service called ActiveCalls that provides call centers with custom functionality and robust compliance support – PortaOne was the obvious choice.
“Part of the feedback we received from the market is that a lot of the existing VoIP suppliers in the market did not have experience in navigating those know-your-customer regulations. So we understood that while regulation is always a big barrier to entry, it’s also a big opportunity. But you need the right partner to navigate through it, and you need to reach the right scale to cover compliance costs, administrative costs, and so on,” explains Marios.
We decided to use PortaSwitch again because we knew that the system is rock solid… there was no or almost no downtime in over two years of collaboration, and almost every single feature works without bugs.
Marios Italos, CEO of Intergo Telecom
Plus, adds Marios, “The open API architecture of PortaSwitch allows us to add any type of module we want, or we can use the Add-on Mart marketplace to get the functionality quickly and support any type and size of customer.”
Launching a new service fast with API
By combining the PortaSwitch UCaaS platform with cloud PBX and the low-code, easily integrated services available in the Add-on Mart, ActiveCalls was able to design a seamless cloud call center product that has built-in features such as the PortaPhone softphone solution, autodialer, call recording and transcription, CRM integration, and more – all business-boosting features that help its platform stand out in the call center market.
More importantly, they were able to design it fast. Very fast. In fact, the Intergo Telecom team was able to build and release ActiveCalls in an astonishingly short time frame.
“When we decided to launch it, we were only a few weeks away from a trade show that was catering to call centers and our ICP, or ideal customer profile,” recalls Marios. “I went into an all-hands meeting and said, ‘Guys, we have one and a half months to make this and be ready.’ Everyone thought I was crazy.” But, thanks to the team’s existing knowledge and experience with customizing PortaSwitch and with the help of PortaOne support (and a lot of long workdays), Intergo Telecom was able to build and launch ActiveCalls a full week before the deadline.
“We presented it at the trade show and we won and onboarded our first customer,” Marios says. “Not having those add-on features would have translated into months or even years of development just to have the minimum to compete. But with PortaSwitch, we were able to enter the market quickly.”
That rapid success was a particular thrill for the Intergo Telecom engineering team. “Usually, when you are working on something that the product team thought about, it takes months or even years to see actual usage and the results of your work,” says Marios. “For our engineers to be able to set everything up in one and a half months and then present it and onboard the first customer was a big motivation boost for them. Everyone is very excited for what’s to come.”
Talk to us about how you want to expand your business
If you’re developing a new telecommunications service, reach out to PortaOne to find out how we can partner with you to make it profitable, flexible, and competitive. Whether you’re helping businesses provide top-tier customer experience, designing an innovative new AI agent, or looking for new ways to differentiate your CSP or MVNO in a crowded market, we can help you build your vision, your way with our unified service management and delivery platform, customizable cloud PBX and cloud call center solution, real-time billing and charging, AI-specific monetization solutions, and marketplace of low-code add-on services.
I’m very positive about the future, because we have built our value proposition on something that is very robust and scalable, and we have good support. Besides just going to market, there is no technical obstacle that we can’t overcome.
Marios Italos, CEO of Intergo Telecom
