The Gateshead based company, formed in 2003, has always placed progress at the forefront of their mission statement, so when Openreach announced that WLR3 was to be introduced, James Drake, Sales Director at Eclipse, knew that the company should act fast.
He said: “As soon as the announcement was made we drew up a plan of action, and started a tendering process to find a suitable TPI who could partner us through the transition.
“Union Street quickly impressed us with their knowledge, experience in the Telco sector and most importantly the user friendly and intuitiveness of the aBILLity system.”
After the appointment of Union Street came a huge amount of work, testing and troubleshooting, headed up by project manager Sam Smith, to ensure that Eclipse’s channel partners and direct customers started to benefit from the WLR3 proposition as quickly as possible.
Sam said: “The transition was not without its problems, and involved a huge amount of work from all parties, but we are convinced that the hard work, and most importantly the experience gained by our staff, will give us a distinct advantage over other CP’s in the countdown to the full switchover in 2011.”
The hard work culminated in Eclipse becoming fully WLR3 transitioned on analogue lines in September 2008 and on ISDN2 and ISDN30 a year later, reaching full BAU state for all three products on the 16 September 2009.
The WLR3 system allows real time appointing and detail changes on orders, as well as giving CP’s access to a wide range of business continuity products and the ability re-start stopped lines. The WLR3 platform has also enabled Eclipse Networks and its channel partners to provide service to locations previously unserviceable under the WLR2 system, meaning remote cabins, kiosks, events and exhibitions and even bus stops are now firmly on the sales radar.
James Drake continued: “We’re delighted to be one of the first four in the UK to reach this milestone, and extremely proud that our dealer partners both in the North East and beyond will now be some of the first to benefit from the potential new revenue streams available to resellers using WLR3.
“We’ve already started to witness our partners competing on a level playing with BT retail when it comes to providing service to onsite construction companies, and with the construction industry starting to see strong signs of a revival; we are all extremely excited about what the WLR3 future will hold.”
Steve Cresswell, Technical Director of Union Street added: “Eclipse has been one of our first customers to fully utilise our WLR3 services. This gives them a consistent way of placing all orders, helping them to be more efficient and give a better service to their partners and direct customers.”