VoIP Ireland now considers adding employees, products, services to QC2

VoIP Ireland executives began shopping around last June for a U.S. telecommunications company with plans to take their successful Internet telephone business from Dublin to America by acquisition.

    They chose QC2, a Pawtucket telecom company, and will launch their expansion to the United States from here in Rhode Island.

“[QC2] is an established business. It’s got an established trading history. It’s a profitable company. It’s well-run,” said Brian Powell, managing director of VoIP Ireland, in a telephone interview. “We see it as a huge opportunity for our company.”

VoIP Ireland completed the purchase of QC2 early this month. Executives on both sides of the Atlantic declined to disclose the price, but they were clear about their plans to grow the company in Pawtucket with more employees, products and services.

Working primarily in the Northeast since 1998, QC2 has been focused on the business of installing wireless phone systems, said Dennis diBattista, president of the company’s sales and business development. (The wireless systems use radio waves to connect stationary phones to networks in, say, an office.)

Now, however, the company will also offer its Irish owner’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products and services, diBattista said.

VoIP (pronounced voyp) is a way of sending calls in data packets across a computer network, rather than through traditional telephone lines.

“This gives us another reason to talk to the clients we already have … and sell them additional services,” diBattista said, noting the growing market for Internet phone systems.

  VoIP Ireland is also developing its own broadband and Internet-based pay phones for the U.S. market, Powell said. And the plan is to hire more people at QC2 to sell and install these new technologies here.

Powell said the Pawtucket subsidiary, which employs 20 people, will hire 15 to 20 salespeople and technicians over the next year, and perhaps more afterward, if VoIP Ireland decides to establish a customer support center to service its Internet-based phone systems here. Powell told ElectronicNews.net that he expects QC2 to have $4 million in revenue this year, and VoIP Ireland $8 million.

VoIP Ireland’s support center in Ireland runs around the clock and employs 80 to 90 people, he said, and will support U.S. systems for now. A similar operation in Rhode Island, if the company decides to launch one, would require a staff of at least 30 workers.

    “To build or acquire a customer support center in Rhode Island is something we are considering,” he added, declining to provide further details.

Meanwhile, the management team at QC2 will stay intact, Powell said, with Robert J. Grange III remaining as CEO and diBattista as president. diBattista, who helped found QC2, rejoined the company Jan. 2 after having left in 2002 to work in the wireless Internet business.

With the added sales force and new line of products, diBattista said the company aims to gain more customers in major markets such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. He estimated that 35 percent of QC2’s customers reside in Rhode Island, with the balance scattered throughout the Northeast.

  Headed by Chairman Donal Mangan, VoIP Ireland was founded in 2003 and claims to be the first to offer VoIP technology in Ireland. In a statement, the chairman talked about bringing its signature VoIP system to the United States.

“We are entering the U.S. market at a time when it is growing significantly,” Mangan said. “And we are confident of capturing a sizable share of the market in the Northeast corridor from New York to Boston.”