Underdog emerges as player in telecom industry.

A family-run company in West Nipissing believes it has dialed the right business strategy to corner Canada's growing long-distance and voice-over Internet markets.

"Long distance costs bite hard into the pocketbooks and profits of ordinary Canadians and businesses," says PhoneNet Communications CEO Marc Serre. "We know our service will help homes and businesses across the country.

"We want to help the under serviced areas of Ontario where the big companies will not go because they are off the beaten path."

Using existing telephone and Internet lines, PhoneNet permits customers to make long-distance calls at a rate lower than other telephone providers because the calls are placed over the World Wide Web.

Serre says the company currently serves 24 major cities and 500 communities across Ontario, Montreal and Gatineau, and has 11 independent companies wholesaling its services.

Last month, PhoneNet announced it intends to expand its long-distance telephone services across Canada and to triple its workforce to meet increasing consumer demand.

"We are looking at expanding further into Northern and southern Ontario and Montreal, where we already have customers," he says. "We want to look at expanding into the rest of Quebec. We have around 90 per cent of Ontario ready for our service, but there is still part of the Thunder Bay and Tri-Town area we still have to complete some work in."

The announcement was well received in West Nipissing, which saw one of its largest employers--Weyerhaeuser--close its Sturgeon Falls' corrugated cardboard facility in the winter of 2002 putting 140 people out of work.

"The majority of our new jobs will be in the community, but we are looking for people to market the company across the province and Canada," says Serre. "We are looking at expanding our customer service and technical staff here in West Nipissing."

The company says it is strategically located in West Nipissing because 70 per cent of the population is bilingual, an important advantage when providing services to clients in both Ontario and Quebec.

Serre says $810,000 has been committed to the planned expansion, and is looking for more investors to expand across Canada.

Started in the spring of 2003, PhoneNet was founded by Marc's father, Gaetan Serre, a former Member of Parliament for the Nickel Belt riding, and well-known local businessman Maurice Ethier.

Marc, who previously developed telecom technologies for the Canadian Hearing Society, has lectured on the impact technology can have on people with disabilities, and received an IWAY award for Adaptive Technologies from the Canadian Advanced Internet Development Organization, recently joined the family business.

He says the company is able to compete against larger companies like Primus, Bell Canada and Vonage by using existing infrastructures and wholesaling its service to local Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep the cost to its customers down.

"Our services are unique because we can work with older telephone lines that are standard equipment in most Canadian homes, and we can work with the newest Internet communications," says Serre.

As part of its wholesaling effort, Serre says PhoneNet offers a number of options to smaller and independent ISPs, including helping these companies to improve their own networks to be able to compete against large corporations.

While the company's long-distance service has been in place since early last year, it recently expanded its services to offer voice-over Internet, videoconferencing and other features.

"PhoneNet is blazing new trails through the techno jungle," says Serre, who proudly points out only two other companies, neither of which are fully Canadian owned, are using the same technology.

"It is exciting, because we have proven we can compete with the prices of the larger companies, and their services," he adds.

By DEAN LISK

For Northern Ontario Business