Primus Telecommunications today announced that it is opening a Chicago office. Their main focus will be hosted IP-PBX services for small and medium enterprises. Primus is known much better in Canada and Australia, in the US they operate mainly in the wholesale voice markets. And now they’re back in the US market again with a hosted IP-PBX offering. The effort headed by Kevin Weber, formerly of CBeyond, with whom TelephonyOnline had an interesting talk. Next on the menu? Apparently Dallas, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and Houston.
Now this is not Primus’s first time in the US market outside of wholesale voice minutes, it’s just that the last time was for consumer VoIP. Their offering, if I recall correctly, was called Lingo and it had its share of headlines in 2004-2005. As with other independent VoIP offerings, it didn’t catch on well enough and got buried when the Cable MSOs finally arrived in force. After that, Primus largely slipped off the radar as it went through increasingly tough times across the board, culminating in bankruptcy in March. They emerged from chapter 11 in June, ready to do battle once more it seems. It’s a tough business, as we all know, but perhaps if the economy has turned the corner the timing will turn out to be favorable.
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On the heels of short boom-busts of hosted offerings in the region previously by Appia, Covad, DLS.net, GeckoTech, and the well-funded M5, this looks like a strange way for a global player like PMUG to break into a significant SMB market.