Company history
Excel was founded in 1988 by Dallas entrepreneur Kenny Troutt and Steve Smith, as a long-distance reseller in the US telecom sector at the birth of telecom deregulation. In the mid-1980s, Smith developed an interest in the network marketing business model. He recognized the marketing and compensation strategy was suited for the marketing and distribution of services, rather than physical products. He designed and deployed his network-marketing strategy at a telecommunication startup company; this concept grew to become Excel—a billion-dollar publicly traded long-distance company. Excel reached a billion dollars in revenues, nine years faster than Microsoft. On May 10, 1996, Excel became the youngest company to join the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), trading under the symbol (ECI). In June 1997, Excel acquired Telco Communications Group. Before the purchase, Excel had to resell long-distance service through other companies' networks, such as Frontier Communications. In November 1998, Excel merged with Teleglobe. Kenny Troutt retired as CEO on September 20, 1999, and was replaced by Christina Gold.
Excel–Teleglobe was taken over by Teleglobe's major shareholder, Bell Canada. Bell Canada then demoted Excel separately to a subsidiary and eventually spun it off to a private company, VarTec Communications, which required FTC approval to return to the private sector. After approval, VarTec continued the network marketing business model. On November 1, 2004, VarTec Communications (the parent corporation of Excel) unexpectedly filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Excel sought to be released from its contracts with its independent representatives. This allowed it to continue to receive revenue from its large base of installed customers, without paying eternal commissions to the franchisees. Excel continued to operate, but ceased to be a multi-level marketing company. Although the change created cash enabling it to pay creditors, it was seen as shortsighted by the franchisee association, because it removed the primary source of sales and customer loyalty.
In September 2005, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the transfer of licenses to Comtel Telecom Assets, LLP and on June 12, 2006, the company emerged from bankruptcy under its new ownership, announcing a return to a slightly revised version of its former name, Excel Telecom. On March 16, 2010, Matrix Business Technologies announced it would acquire the customers and substantially all the assets of Comtel Telecom Assets, LLP.
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Kenny A. Troutt is an American businessman. He founded Excel Communications, a Texas-based telecommunications company that offered long distance phone service. Troutt became a billionaire in 1998 when Excel was sold to Teleglobe for $3.5 billion. As of 2023, his net worth was estimated at USD$ 1.5B.
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AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, which had granted summary judgment to Excel Communications, Inc. and decided that AT&T Corp. had failed to claim statutory subject matter with U.S. Patent No. 5,333,184 under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded the case for further proceedings.
The history of AT&T dates back to the invention of the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, who obtained the first US patent for the telephone, and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell and Hubbard also established American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which acquired the Bell Telephone Company and became the primary telephone company in the United States. This company maintained an effective monopoly on local telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators agreed to allow AT&T to retain Western Electric and enter general trades computer manufacture and sales in return for its offer to split the Bell System by divesting itself of ownership of the Bell Operating Companies in 1982.
Birch Communications was an American provider of IP-based communications, network broadband, cloud computing, and information technology services to small, mid-sized, enterprise and wholesale business customers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. It was acquired by Fusion Connect in 2018 and integrated into the company. Founded in 1996 in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, several years later the company began acquiring other telecom companies in an effort to increase its network size and service offerings. Birch Communications raised $77.5 million in funding in 2011, and $110 million in funding in 2012 after it financed a new $90 million facility.
