Mike Chambers, director of operations and customer service at Relyco Business Solutions, a commercial printing firm in Dover, says he gets a message a day from companies looking to sell him telecommunications services.
Before he actually decided to switch from Carousel Industries, a provider based in Rhode Island, he “kicked the tires” at Comcast but chose BayRing Communications, out of Portsmouth.
“We wanted someone that was hands-on, not someone out of Providence,” Chambers said.
Chambers said he didn’t consider FairPoint Communications, the company that in 2008 acquired Verizon’s Northern New England’s operations.
That’s OK with BayRing, which presents itself as a high-end “boutique” firm that caters to business and which has doubled its size in the last five years. And only being considered isn’t necessarily bad for Comcast, whose business market has grown some 24 percent nationally in the last year, to $917 million.
But it’s not OK with FairPoint, which has a small slice of the broadband business market in New England.
“We have a pretty small share,” said Patrick McHugh, state president of the North Carolina-based company. “But we are now focusing pretty heavily on the business market.”
That is where the money is. And now that the company is finally free of most of its regulatory shackles, FairPoint wants that business back.