Hughes wires up Heartland Automotive with managed satellite VoIP service

Jiffy Lube's largest franchisee, Heartland Automotive Services, has tapped into Hughes Networks Systems' (Nasdaq: HUGH) VoIP service that will allow it to get rid of multiple POTS lines at its retail locations and thus cut its phone system costs and improve customer service capabilities at its hundreds of retail locations.

Serving 400 retail locations across 17 U.S. markets, Heartland will be able to use the Hughes VoIP service to not only reduce phone service costs by eliminating long distance voice charges, but also use the services' converged voice and data capabilities.

Satellite-based services make sense for traditionally distributed retail chains, which traditionally had to purchase wireline-based services from service providers from the local service provider that resides in each market they serve. Instead, the Hughes offering simplifies that process by consolidating both phone and data services into one bill.

Mike Cook, senior vice president at Hughes said that ActiveQoS technology "addresses a heretofore underserved market--namely industries such as retail that have distributed branch networks and would benefit from convergence and high availability, but cannot justify the expense of an MPLS network."

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