AT&T, Comcast and Windstream join telecom price comparison site wiresurfer.com

Small to medium business (SMB) customers will soon be able to search for telecom services much like searching for flights on Expedia.com, thanks to wiresurfer.com's launch of its new price comparison website on Tuesday.

At the Coral Springs, Fla.-based company's site, SMBs will have a place where they can not only compare telephony and Internet service prices, but also see what promotional deals are available in the regions in which they operate.

Fifteen service providers, including brand names such as AT&T (NYSE: T), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN), have already committed to offer their services on the wiresurfer.com site. SMBs can purchase an array of traditional wireline voice, wireless voice and data, VoIP and broadband services, including cable and DSL, collocation hosting, audio and web conferencing and cloud-based services.

Jeff Kaufman, wiresurfer.com's co-founder and CEO, said the company will give SMBs, many of which lack an IT staff at all, a simpler and less time-consuming way to purchase telecom services so they can get back to conducting their core business processes.

Right now, it could take an SMB up to three days to search various telecom provider websites and call each of them individually to see which one has the best price.

"Nearly everyone has become familiar with online comparison shopping using sites like Orbitz or Travelzoo, but telecom never became part of that 21st century marketplace until now," Kaufman said in a release announcing the new service. "With wiresurfer, carriers promote their deals in a very user friendly format, allowing SMBs to avoid the hassle of keeping track of each carrier's bundled options and sales processes."

Under the terms of an agreement wiresurfer.com has with its telecom provider members, the providers will pay wiresurfer.com 14 to 25 percent of every customer's phone bill throughout the life of their contract.

Kaufman has high hopes for wiresurfer.com. He said in a Reuters article that the company would like to break even in about eight months and have over 16,000 customers in about 30 months.  

Wiresurfer has secured a $200,000 angel investment from Nantucket-based entrepreneur Alan Bankart and is working to get its first round of venture capital funding.

Wiresurfer.com is not the only company to come up with a price comparison site for telecom services. In 2008, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, now CenturyLink, launched Movearoo.com, a website targeting consumers with the message that switching phone services is easier after moving to a new city. Unlike wiresurfer.com, Movearoo.com only deals with the telcos, not cable operators.

For more:
- see the release
- Reuters has this article

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