The Denver Post is not too familiar with Neustar, they referred to the company as “virtually unknown”.
The article is pertaining to Neustar and their bid to retain a very lucrative contract in the telecom space.
This is the same “virtually unknown” company that just spent $109 to million to buy .CO Internet S.A.S.
The Denver Post doesn’t seem to be aware that Neustar (NSR) is a publicly traded company with a valuation of over $2 Billion dollars based on its closing share price on Friday and operate the .US registry as well.
From the article:
A virtually unknown outfit purchased full page ads in The Denver Post last week trumpeting its “flawless performance” and warning of “a $719 million gamble” tied to switching number portability administrators, a puzzling strategy that left some readers scratching their heads.
That company is Neustar, which is vying for a $460 million-a-year contract to be awarded based, in part, on feedback from several members of Colorado’s telecommunications industry.
The winning vendor would manage a database of more than 500 million telephone numbers in the U.S. and Canada for more than 2,000 carriers and provide the back-end work to ensure consumers can seamlessly take their phone number with them when they switch providers.
Sterling, Va.-based Neustar has served as the administrator of the database since its formation following the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The so-called Number Portability Administration Center was established to help foster competition by allowing consumers to “port” their number from one carrier to another.
Neustar’s contract expires in June 2015. It is competing with Telcordia, owned by Swedish telecom giant Ericsson, for the new, five-year deal. The carriers that tap into the database fund the contract.
“The ads that you’re seeing are part of a campaign to ask the people who are in charge, the people who are managing the RFP (request for proposal), to take a step back and try not to rush things,” Neustar spokeswoman Gayle Kansagor said.
She said it’s largely a Beltway campaign, but the company included Denver because of the area’s significant telecommunications presence.
You would think that the Denver Post would have done a little more research into the company.
Joseph Peterson says
Raymond, to be honest, I think this is a molehill.
The opening phrase is a bit jarring, but it’s a rhetorical device. ‘Who is this masked stranger?” we are meant to ask. And by the final paragraphs, the topic is to be elucidated somewhat. He is Zoro, a champion for justice.
Yes, it seems a bit dismissive to call such a large corporation an “outfit”; but it’s meant to create just enough suspense and curiosity to get the reader to read through the article. In context, this ploy is appropriate and fair.
Readers of the Denver Post would have seen puzzling ads from Neustar about a high-stakes Telecom deal. To them, the company would indeed be “virtually unknown”. I’m sure that the editors of the paper sensed this and contacted their advertiser (or were contacted) to publish a followup explanatory article.
Neustar is paying the paper. So the PR spin here is actually pro-Neustar, if you read the piece carefully. Neustar’s rival is identified as foreign (Swedish). Meanwhile, the article ends by emphasizing the local Denver connection, which implies that the newspaper’s readers ought to be on the side of their American champion.
To read this as an affront to Neustar (who is paying for the ads and probably the article) would be backwards.