The front page of Global Capacity's website tells the story as: "We help customers navigate the entire supply chain of global access networks, improving network efficiency, streamlining network operations and reducing network costs."

Although a little wordy, I think the company is really about becoming a trusted expert in access networks. And that is exactly what they have done. Without owning any facilities, they have managed to do business with 350 of the world's largest and most sophisticated carriers, enterprises and state and local governments. GlobalCapacity either sells to, consults with or partners with BT, BT Global Services, T-Systems, Colt, GMAC, AT&T, Cisco, IBM and others.

At the heart of this company's unique position in the telecom consulting and services marketplace is its global pricing platform for telecom access services. Formed through the merger of four companies – Magenta net-Logic of Manchester UK provided the pricing software, CenterPath of Waltham MA provided the metro-optical network design, build an dmanage services for healthcare and financial services organizations, Global Capacity of Houston TX brought layer 2 WAN network integration and Virtual Network Operator skills and clients and Vanco Direct (formerly Universal Access) network integration.

Jack Lodge, COO (we both worked at Nortel in the 1998-2001 timeframe. Jack in IT, me in enterprise marketing), pointed out that the last mile market for business – probably $200 billion/year – is primarily characterized as being highly inefficient and not at all price transparent. There are probably 900 suppliers licensed to provide bandwidth around the world and literally thousands of wholesalers, each implementing different strategies for pricing services including zones, distance, citycenter-to-citycenter, so confusion or doing business with whom you know is a big part of the pain that customers experience.

The access network is rarely considered in a strategic sense. Usually it's put together as incremental requirements and incremental contracts are signed and deployed. In modern business, 60-70% of the cost of operating networks is in the access network.

Global Capacity offers three basic products:

• SaaS portal for access to pricing and workflow systems (can place orders directly to carriers) which is listed at $250,000 for setup and $10,000/month for subscription services. Can be customized to enable loading in a carrier's own POPs and rates, and incorporates a Mark-to-Market feature that gives local prices for competitive purposes.
• Consulting practice around network optimization. Hiring independent engineers to think strategically about the network from time to time assures customers that they have the cost-optimized implementation.
• Telecom Expense Management for Carriers (TEM+) includes auditing networks – collecting inventory, invoices and contracted rates reporting on the gaps, and even implementing network updates that reset the cost structure of the service. This is usually a contingency-based price.

With 104 employees, the company plans to move its OTC stock to the NASDAQ in the near future. In the meantime, they'll focus on healthcare network optimizations and ASPs that want/need to incorporate the access network into their service offerings. From a global footprint perspective, Global Capacity has strong North America, Western and Eastern Europe with limited but growing engagements in Latin America, South America and Asia.