Viatel signs up Symphony to resell data services

Viatel will be working with Symphony to help the reseller develop new revenue streams

UK, Egham, 24th April: Viatel, a pan-European business communications provider, is now working with Symphony, a provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications services, to offer its data services to customers as part of Symphony's extended portfolio. Viatel's extensive experience, robust solutions and back office infrastructure will enable Symphony to quickly provide an increased range of services without the costs and hassles associated with developing and managing these services in house. Symphony, traditionally a voice services provider, will be using the partnership with Viatel to grow its portfolio and ultimately revenue. This will be particularly important as the market for traditional voice minutes continues to fall.

Symphony is moving into a relatively new area with Viatel's services and therefore required a partner that could provide in depth data expertise, as well sales and operational support. Symphony selected Viatel over other providers due to its clear focus on supporting the channel and its extensive data networking experience. In addition, Viatels range of robust services means that Symphony will be able to give its customers greater choice and flexibility.

One of the biggest factors for Symphony in choosing to work with Viatel was the ability to outsource first line support. Rather than having to make huge investments in support staff, Symphony will be using Viatels technical staff to provide first line support to customers.

The voice market, particularly amongst SMEs, is becoming more competitive and in order to keep up with this we needed to be able to offer a complete portfolio of services. The solutions from Viatel will really help increase data revenues and stay ahead of the competition, said Mat Fearon, XX, Symphony. Viatel's channel programmes, coupled with the fact that they are able to handle first line support took away a lot of the risk for us in expanding into the data services market. Essentially, Viatel offered us a complete package that we could take to customers. As a result we have already seen revenue generated through the sales of services such as DSL, IP VPNs and MPLS networks.

Symphony is also starting to migrate its existing broadband customers across to Viatel' broadband offering because of the support and flexibility offered by Viatel. In the future Symphony also plans to offer Viatel's VoIP services as customers start to move from traditional voice networks to more cost effective next generation offerings.

With our services, Symphony has been able to extend its portfolio and offer a broader range of services to its customers. The communications market has, and continues to, change quickly and we are looking forward to working with Symphony to ensure they take advantage of these market changes, said Sue Davidson, XX, Viatel.

About Viatel

Viatel is a pan-European business communications company operating across 6 European markets, including the UK, France and Germany. It has more than 10,000 business customers, providing them a range of business communication services that help companies of all sizes to access the internet, connect their people and places, manage their web applications and increase the security of their data. Headed by Lucy Woods, formerly CEO of WorldCom EMEA and BT Northern Ireland, the company employs 200 people throughout Western Europe.

For further information on Viatel, please visit:

www.viatel.com

For further information please call:

Ana Williams on +44 (0)207 357 8612

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