Look at history for a glimpse of the future: Digital trumps analog every time, and the Internet continues to create ripples of change throughout society. Put the two together, and you can see the future of telephone communications.

“Telephony is going toward the Internet,” said Brevard Wireless co-founder Eric Welborn. The 3-year-old company offers an alternative to cable and traditional Bell service for VoIP phone and high-speed Internet service.

“The Internet is allowing companies like ours to grow and become little Bellsouth’s, and there’s no way to stop it,” said Welborn, who started Brevard Wireless with business partner Scott Carullo, a Merritt Island native who graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in information technology.

Carullo, 37, lives in Rockledge with his wife, Shanna. Welborn, 34, is originally from Lafayette, Ind., but spent much time in Brevard County visiting relatives. He moved to Brevard in 1992 and lives on Merritt Island with his wife, Alison.

Both had owned local technology firms before; Welborn in telephone systems and wireless campus coverage and Carullo in Internet service, commercial software development, and networking. The two knew each other, partly through their mutual hobby of fishing.

When they decided to join forces and create a larger firm, they found many of the resources they needed were readily available.

Brevard Wireless built its network, letting the company be competitive on rates and control the quality of its service, Carullo said. Other companies who resell phone service have to pay fees to use another system; Brevard Wireless avoids those costs.

VoIP converts the analog voice signal from your phone into a digital signal that travels over the Internet. If the person your calling has a regular phone, the signal is converted back at the other end. You can make a VoIP call directly from a computer, a special VoIP phone, or a standard phone using an adapter.
Brevard Wireless assigns its customers regular phone numbers so that people can call them from regular phones without using special equipment.

When the company started, VoIP was used mostly by companies connecting remote sites to their headquarters. Today, companies like Vonage have spread the idea of using VoIP for their regular phone service.

Welborn doesn’t see other smaller companies offering VoIP service as a threat. “I put us in the same boat rather than as competition,” he said. He’s thankful for Vonage, which has the deep pockets to take on the big phone companies.
“They’ve been taking advantage of businesses and you and me for a long, long time,” Welborn said of traditional phone companies.

Business clients account for 80 percent of Brevard Wireless customers. The company also has developed a niche market in beachside condominiums, which can share one connection for Internet and phone service without disrupting existing building wiring. “We save money during the installs, so we pass those savings along to our customers regularly,” Carullo said. The same cost-saving principle would apply to a commercial building with multiple tenants.

Brevard Wireless has about a dozen tower sites throughout the county, for a high-speed fixed-wireless broadband network that covers Sebastian to Mims, plus west to the St. Johns River wetlands, and east about 15 miles offshore.

To potential customers concerned about reliability, Carullo touts the network as being less prone to power outages, wind damage, and flooding. “We go from point A to point B in the air with microwave frequencies that are immune to weather, debris, damage, wind, water, and construction damaging cables in the ground,” Carullo said. In contrast, non-wireless services in the county travel on poles or in the ground, leaving them vulnerable.

“Commercial communication towers are built to remain in operation even in the worst disasters,” Carullo said.

Customers can save up to 40 percent, the company said, largely because VoIP networks handle call flow differently. When a customer makes an outbound call, for example, the inbound lines stay open, letting a business operate with fewer lines.

The company targets organizations with one to 50 people, generally too small to have their own information technology staff. Brevard Wireless offers what Welborn calls an office in a box solution, offering Internet services, telephone service, network maintenance, and PC repair.

Brevard Wireless also provides offsite backups for disaster recovery. The company also has hotspot areas where users can connect automatically and pay for service. It also designs, installs, and maintains custom wireless network links for customers who want to own their local infrastructure.

Coming up: Brevard Wireless is designing access areas for mobile customers to have high-speed coverage in certain spots. It’s also developing IP camera security systems.

In addition to its two owners, Brevard Wireless employs three people.
For more information, please visit www.brevardwireless.com