Founded in 2014, Vodia partner Skyetel is “the telecom company that scares the big guys,” an independent telco with customers in all 50 states and all Canadian provinces. Skyetel maintains a robust network spanning North America that provides true multi-tenancy to resellers. The company’s platform was built for resellers to manage multiple customers from one convenient portal.
Founded in 2014, Vodia partner Skyetel is “the telecom company that scares the big guys,” an independent telco with customers in all 50 states and all Canadian provinces. Skyetel maintains a robust network spanning North America that provides true multi-tenancy to resellers. The company’s platform was built for resellers to manage multiple customers from one convenient portal.
Skyetel’s multi-tenant, SIP trunking platform is configured for resellers to easily connect with Vodia to provision and manage their DID inventory – resellers can take advantage of relationship pricing without any contracts, commitments or upfront fees. The company’s “bring your own PBX” policy enables its resellers but doesn’t compete with them: they Skyetel platform makes it so resellers can easily handle multiple customers from a single, easy-to-use portal.
Prior to Skyetel, Chris Bardos – President of Skyetel and former California State Debate champion – founded SkyeBlue, a successful phone service provider to small- and medium-sized businesses. As a reseller, however, Chris found there weren’t any good carrier-grade, SIP trunk platforms catering to the unique needs of multiple tenant-customers. Chris sold SkyeBlue to focus on serving resellers as a carrier with a completely different approach and, in 2014, he founded Skyetel, a SIP trunk provider with a specific focus on resellers.
In 2016 Skyetel deployed its current next-gen nationwide carrier platform, which has had zero customer-affecting outages since it was deployed; as of 2020, Skyetel was the fastest growing North American carrier deploying its own OCN (622J) coast-to-coast and had developed a reputation for awesome customer service, by reducing average support response time to mere minutes. The company has had 100 percent uptime for seven consecutive years.
Skyetel is as committed to its community as it is to its resellers. The company has won The SW Washington Business Journal Best In Business award four times. In 2018 Skyetel committed to going from “carbon neutral” to “carbon negative,” to offset more carbon than it produces. Skyetel has also partnered with One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization committed to global reforestation – Skyetel has contributed to planting thousands of trees and is a member of Conservation International’s Emerald Circle, a group of donors who have made significant investments in the Conservation International mission.
Like Vodia, Skyetel is a relationship-first company, and its team is what’s propelled the company to its current level of success. Chris Bardos is an entrepreneur and fierce competitor who loves technology – he embodies Mark Twain’s quote, “find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” He absolutely loves what he does. When he’s not running one of America’s most awesome SIP trunk providers, he and his wife relax at their cabin on the coast of northwestern Washington and travel abroad whenever they can in search of fine wines and joie d’vivre.
Like Chris, Brian Smiley, VP, Sales & Marketing, loves what he does, delineating and executing the company’s revenue strategy. A 20+ year resident of Denver, CO, a continuously growing telecom hub, Brian previously worked for Qwest, Level3, Inteliquent and Peerless Network. He built his career as a sales leader on a technical background in quality and sales engineering. Brian most enjoys consultatively sharing what he has learned over two decades in telecom, especially about the reseller market, whether it is with his clients or employees. An avid boater, lacrosse coach and pilot, he has three children.
Want to find out more about these indefatigable telecom pioneers determined to provide the best service to resellers throughout North America? Contact Brian Smiley, bsmiley@skyetel.com.
Vodia will host a joint webinar with Skyetel on Thursday, 13 January at 1:00 PM EST – this webinar will take resellers through the entire configuration process. Register here: https://my.demio.com/ref/3mqwR2LGEZu5vT06.
White-labeling is a way manufacturers support well-known brands, simplifying both market access and customer recognition. It is used in many industries, including the telecom industry. While it’s easy to brand web pages and emails (including the Vodia PBX frontend and backend), white-labeling hardware and apps is a different topic.
“We were jumping on that train very early,” says Christian Stredicke, serving the MSPs, Vodia is marking a decade as a leader and pioneer in offering PBX software that effectively turns mobile phones, laptops, PCs and standard VoIP phones into clients everyone in an organization can use for communication.
Our partner, Easy On Hold (EOH), based in Kalamazoo, MI, provides streaming music and messages on a custom marketing schedule for contact centers, enterprise-level corporations and small-medium size businesses via their phones and overhead environments. The company creates effective message on hold productions, auto attendant and IVR greetings, overhead announcements, and overhead music solutions. And they’ve got some great guidance for what to play and when for your callers during the holidays.
