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Your PBX Called; It Wants A Retirement Package

• Evan Kirstel

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What if your hotel could keep checking guests in even when the primary PMS goes down? We sit with Jason from SNET Communications to unpack how a true all‑in‑one stack—networks, SD‑WAN, security, UCaaS, CCaaS, and a native PMS—eliminates finger‑pointing and keeps operations moving when it matters most.

We walk through the realities of legacy PBX in hospitality and why a cloud approach finally fits the property workflow. SNET’s platform delivers over 120 PMS integrations and a unique twist: a built‑in PMS that serves as a live failover. That means front desks continue check‑ins, wake‑up calls, and room inventory while the main PMS is offline, then resync automatically. The economics make sense for boutique hotels and big brands alike—reuse analog room phones with ATAs, retire maintenance-heavy hardware, and unlock new revenue from modern in‑room devices and connected TV experiences. Reliability isn’t just promised; redundant data centers in Chicago and Sacramento provide resilience even when hyperscalers stumble.

The conversation travels beyond hotels. We break down a path from fixing broadband contention with SD‑WAN to deploying POS integrations and UCaaS across 1,500+ pizza locations, plus wins with dental groups, spas, auto dealers, and an energy company that needed precise call flows. Custom CRM integrations—often at little or no cost—turn rigid software into tailored workflows. Looking ahead, the roadmap brings practical AI to the front lines: a low‑cost chatbot bundled with UCaaS, a voice bot to deflect routine calls, and real‑time transcription with sentiment analysis to coach teams and protect the guest experience.

If you care about guest satisfaction, uptime, and real ROI from technology—not just new tools for their own sake—this is a deep dive into what modern multi‑location communication should look like. Subscribe, share with an operator who needs a smarter stack, and leave a review with the one feature you want most in your hospitality or retail tech.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody. Super excited today to sit down with Jason from SNET Communications, who are really transforming how the hospitality industry, multi-location businesses scale and communicate. Jason, how are you?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm doing great, Evan. It's great to be here. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thanks for being here. We go back uh each of us many decades in telecom. But before that, maybe introduce yourself, your journey, and how would you describe SNET communications these days?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'd totally be dating myself if I go all the way back, but I did start off with the Bell South days, so you can kind of get an idea of where I started in the communication field. Um did uh did a long stint with one of the first ISPs, Mindspring, and then they merged with Earthlink. Um, did my own uh channel communications company for about four years and then went to work for uh Vonage, which first was Vocalosity. We got purchased by Vonage, spent 14 years there and just came over as CRO of SNET Communications about six months ago. Nice. Um one of the one of the things that drew me to this opportunity is one to really come in and build something again. Um, I built a very robust channel business at Vonage, and I uh uh really wanted to come in and come into a company where I can really drive and build something again. And SNET Communications gave me that opportunity, but also expanded the breadth of product that we have available to us uh to sell. Um one of the differences that SNET um has is that we are an all-inclusive provider, right? So we do we do the circuits, we can do band, you know, broadband, fiber, wireless. Uh, we do we have robust SD-WAN and managed firewall solution. And then ultimately we've got the UCAS and CCAS play that we can layer on top of it. So what it does is it provides one ability for a company to come in and have one provider providing all solutions. I think where we differentiate ourselves in the market is I like to say we are a custom communication solutions provider. Um, we have about 70 integrations built already with different CRM packages, where other companies might charge an arm and a leg for it or say, hey, we're not going to do it, or here are the APIs, you can build it yourself. We'll work with the customer, come up with what that integration needs to be, and actually work with them to build it out for little or no cost. Um also because we have the UCAS CCAS platform of our own. I've been in selling situations where they might be selling, they might be trying to solve for an employee experience or a customer experience, and they might need a feature or a manipulation of a feature that we already have. And we've been able to do that because of our development staff on staff. So I like to say we, you know, we sit down with customers, either trying to figure out their network issues, their their broadband issues they might be having. Uh, and then, you know, their UCAS and CCAS to see what they're trying to accomplish on the employee and customer experience side, work with our partners, work with the customer, and come up with a custom solution that best fits their needs. And as I've come in and kind of built this out, what we're seeing is larger and larger opportunities coming to us and that communication through our partners.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. Well, there's a lot to unpack there. Um, maybe talk about the modern hospitality landscape. What are the sort of problems they're seeing uh in their operations? And what what are they challenged by beyond obviously having great connectivity and communication services? Maybe go a little deeper into challenge.

SPEAKER_00:

You bring up a great news service that we just launched about two months ago, and that's our Unified Hospitality Communication Platform. Um, we are really excited about this platform. What it has done for um in relation to how we're approaching the market, where we have a unique offering, is we have over 120 PMS integrations already built today, the property management systems, right? Operas of the world, things of that nature. But where we have a unique offering on the cloud-based front is that we offer our own property management system solution. Where this comes into play is we're actually providing the ability to create redundancy in your PMS solution. So we're, you know, operas, PMS solutions do the check-in, checkouts, manage of inventory in the rooms, things of that nature, right? Wake up calls, right? What we do is, and and you've probably been to a hotel before where they where the PMS solution's gone down, they can't do check-in and check out, you're just sitting there. What our solution enables them to do is we can create a redundancy. So if that goes down, they can utilize our PMS to actually continue doing check-in, checkouts, manage inventory, whatever, wake-up calls, whatever they need to do. And then when that PMS solution comes back online, our redundancy syncs with it and they're ready to go. That is really unique in the market today. No other um unified hospitality platform is doing that today. So that's kind of how we're approaching the business. And also what the our own PMS provides us to do is the ability to do a standalone version. If it's a smaller hotel, they don't want to pay the either the uh the high cost of deploying their own PMS, they can utilize our PMS for that experience.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. Um you know, typically in hospitality, you either have a great experience, uh, many brands or a terrible one. Um, what's going on in this space? Is there is it legacy infrastructure, too many vendors trying to communicate, maybe not enough investment or a modern, fresh approach, all the above. What do you see out there?

SPEAKER_00:

I you know, the really interesting thing is because you know, throughout my career, especially in the UCAS space, um, there wasn't really a play for cloud-based solutions to play in the space. So the majority of the time it was, you know, PBX solutions, on-premise equipment really ran that whole hotel business because cloud-based solutions didn't have the ability to do the check-ins, the checkouts, the functionality that they needed. Um, what we've been able to do is come up with a platform that actually can displace an on-premise solution. We can utilize legacy telephones in rooms. You know, if it's an analog, we can utilize ATA devices to actually utilize the phones in the room. So they don't need to get rid of all that equipment. But it is a full display. So they don't need that equipment anymore. If they're paying, you know, support costs to service that equipment, all that stuff, they get to move away from that. The cloud-based solution provides uh, you know, a cloud-based environment that could be utilized across multiple locations. So if you have uh, you know, if you have a number of different hotels, where we're talking to a different um many different companies that have a number of different hotels, you know, you have one cloud-based solution across all properties, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. So what type of hotels benefit the most? Are they sort of the you know, multi-site regional groups, national brands with these giant footprints? And how do you explain the economics? They're typically very tight with infrastructure spending. So I assume you have a pretty nice value prop on the business side as it is.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So there's, you know, obviously no it-from cost to get started with us, right? That's that that's a perk, right? And then you move into a month-to-month type of um, you mean a monthly payment, right? A monthly recurring payment, right? But where it's interesting is that we're having conversations with big brands, we're having conversations with boutique hotels. We actually did a demo for the back office for a big hotel group to have our unified communication platform in there as a back office solution. That demo went so well, they then turned to us and wanted to talk more about the Unified Communication Hospitality platform. That's turned into a really big conversation with a very big brand. We're looking forward to getting that moving along and hopefully rolling out with several, several big brand hotels. But we're also in talks with a lot of boutique hotels. As you know, in this business as well, there's there's owners of hotels that have um that have maybe two or three, four hotels of their own. Um, so we're in talks with them to maybe roll out across their uh different properties that they have under their ownership.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. I mean, the other challenge I see with hospitality is on the customer service, customer experience side. You know, you call a contact center, they're not really connected to the property itself, or you're at the property and they can't, you know, connect you to change a reservation. Um, I assume that's a similar disconnect. Are you you're trying to look at that problem?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, that's the great thing about SDEC communications and one of the things we pride ourselves on. I always like to say we're an operations first company because we do such a great job on our with our implementation and support side of the house. Um, I like determining a concierge level service. Um, you know, we have customers that have, we're a 20-year-old company, by the way, and we have customers that have been with us nine years longer. We have an average lifetime of a customer of nine years. We have a net promo score of of 90 plus. So it screens volumes on how people like us when they come and actually we provide service for them and how long they stay with us. Um and I think that's you know, our our ability to have visibility into that unified communication hospitality platform. And if they are having issues, be able to call in, we have visibility into what's going on and we could quickly fix that. Um, it's been a great perk in relation to how we how we service our customers once they come board with SNET communications.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. I always wonder about those phones in room. They're like something out of the 1970s at worst. Uh, you know, best maybe it's a 10, 20-year-old phone. I always thought, you know, beyond, I guess they have to have them for emergency services, they could do more with communications in the room, whether it's a television being connected, whether it's a tablet or some sort of interface for uh room service. Uh it sounds like there's a revenue opportunity as well, not just reducing costs and capital.

SPEAKER_00:

There really is. It's it's funny as as we were rolling out this solution, I made it a point to work internally with our teams to create an ROI calculator because there are not only cost savings that you're seeing just from you know reduced pain points that they're having to do with on-premise equipment and costs that they incur today and savings that we get there, but there are revenue opportunities, like you said, where you know we could put more updated phones in the room that provide functionality that they could actually have revenue opportunities where they're either calling to get menu items off the room service thing or you name it. And then our television television technology as well that provides you the ability to go on cost savings and checkout, all that stuff. But yes, there's there's a number of ways that the system could be used, not only on a cost savings measure, but also on a revenue-producing measure as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. And I think many of the same problems apply to other industries. Clearly, you have your hands full with hospitality, it's going well. That's a huge market. But um other ambitions and maybe healthcare or retail that also need a lot of help when it comes to communications.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, obviously, yeah. Well, you know, we've had uh we've had a long-story career with some really big brands that have helped us. Um, you know, one of the things that we did, uh one of the big providers that we have today is uh Marcos Pizza, which is an interesting little story. Is we initially had 155 locations with Marcos Pizza. Wow. And they were having broadband issues um where they were like they were utilizing the same broadband across multiple locations. And, you know, you have someone on a device using some bandwidth doing a media thing that they shouldn't probably be doing. It was sucking energy, you know, brand broadband up. What we did is we went in and utilized an RSD-WAN solution, solved that broadband issue. Um, once we solved that broadband issue, they came to us and asked us to do an integration into their point of sales service. Um, and so we built that integration and we got their Unified Communications Service technology as well. That turned into corporate coming to us once we got those 155 locations, asking us to roll it out across all their locations, and we now have 1,500 plus Marcos pizza locations, and they continue to grow. We actually just got a huge number of uh Marcos Pizzas out of Puerto Rico, interesting enough, uh, that just turned up. So that's an ongoing thing. Um, we've also you know had the benefit of a big dental practice, one of those multiple, it's called Family Adental. It was about 80 locations. They, interestingly enough, were having an issue where they were uploading patient images to their network, and it was taking anywhere from five to 10 minutes, um, costing thousands of dollars a day to get those images up. We went in with our SD-WAN solutions, solved that broadband issue, got it down to 30 seconds, saved them a lot of money. That in turn, uh you know, they came to us and said, Hey, can you build an integration into our CRM and you know, uh deploy your UCAS solution? We got that as well, and that's turned into 85 locations. So we do a lot in that space. We have a lot of brands like that. Handed Stone is another big um uh customer of ours that we have like over 85 locations today with them. Um so that distributed, that distributed multi-location model is big for us today. We also, you know, have the ability to go into mid-market as well. We have some you know larger companies as well that are coming to us talking about deploying our overall solutions to them. Our ability to build those integrations has really helped us. So if companies are looking to do something, you know, around their CRM and we don't have that, and that's not built today, like let's say in the insurance business, uh, we have those ability that ability to build those integrations, and that opens up opportunities for us to really solve for their solutions.

SPEAKER_01:

Amazing. Well, it's very exciting to see the tech that you and I have known about for a decade being applied beyond the Fortune 500 who you know have big budgets, but right uh easily consume this. But the SMEs who are kind of left in the lurch many times, so it's it's uh a fantastic opportunity. What's next? Peek into where you're going, what's on the radar next year, maybe with the product or the marketplace?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think you know, as you're well aware, I mean, AI is right the future, right? And so more features coming out in relation to AI, sentiment analysis, or we're gonna finally release a voice bot, which is gonna be really cool and crucial to us moving into that space. That's gonna be really great. We have a we have a chat bot today, which we have a unique offering there where you know it was it was it was interesting. I had a partner come to me and go, you know, I need a UCAS offering with a chatbot that I don't need to deploy contact center seat, and it doesn't cost me so many dollars to deploy. And so I went to my product team. I go, we can build this, right? We can build a UCAS product with a chatbot. So we were able to build a UCAS product with our chatbot. Chatbot only costs$15 a month, and you get, you know, you get the ability to put that on your website. And so what that's opened the door for is like larger SMB, mid-market companies that are smaller mid-market companies that are looking for a chatbot on their website and you know, a unified communication as a service platform on the backside, right? Um, so that's getting a lot of interest. We're getting a lot of interest there. And what we're gonna do then is roll out the voice bot on top of that, which will be really interesting because that'll give the flexibility of having the web presence and you know, a bot utilizing that AI technology there. And then when someone calls in and utilizing the voice bot to answer certain types of questions that you know you don't need an agent for, right? Um, and then we'll roll out sentiment analysis. Obviously, that's you know, trying to understand what's going on in a conversation in real time. Um, that's going to be crucial too for managers to understand what's going on in a call center environment or service service center to really understand what they're doing, you know, on the phone call, how that phone call is evolving. Um, there'll be real-time transcriptions, which will be really interesting to see. Those are the types of things that we're moving in toward in you know in the future. Um, what we want to be able to do is not only solve for the customer experience, I mean the employee experience side, but ultimately the customer experience side as well for companies. And however, they need to actually solve for those solutions and what they're trying to solve for, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. So you've had all this success in a world that's you know usually dominated by big tech or big telecom, you know, the big legacy carriers. What's been the secret of your success, all these wins uh competitively? How have you managed to uh outmaneuver the big names that we all know out there? It's great.

SPEAKER_00:

I remember when I was interviewed with our CEO, Alex Fain, I said the same thing to him because he's had this company for 20 years and it's been a very successful company. And I'm like, you have all these in all these big brands and people that have come to you for service, and what is your secret? And it is what I said earlier. It's what we do on the operation side of the business. I think what how we the two ways I believe we compete in the market today as a smaller brand, a smaller company, is our ability to customize solutions, right? So, and then being that all-in-one provider. That's another big component of it. As I'm reading more and more, and you might be hearing this as well, is that companies are looking for one provider for their communication solutions, right? The the days of going to like a Vonage or a Ring Central and just having their UCAS, CCAS front and then being dependent on someone else to provide the network uh connectivity, and then you having issues and things of that nature, that's been huge for us to be that one provider that can provide all of it. It, you know, as you remember, uh what it was about a month ago, AWS went down, right? A number of brands went down in my space, you know, it's the Vonages, the Ring Central, they all had issues because of this same issue. And one of the things that was really interesting is the day after I did a presentation the day after, and we have a we have a slide in our deck that talks about our redundancy because we have redundant data centers in Chicago and Sacramento, and so we can guarantee uptime. And so I just immediately went to that slide on the deck and said, Hey, did you guys have AWS issues yesterday? Did you have did you have to deal with customers calling you saying, hey, my system's down, whatever? Well, at SDEC Communications, you don't have to worry about that. We've got redundant data centers, we can guarantee uptime. And then I just said, Hey, I'm gonna just move over in the corner and start taking your opportunities, right? But I think that's that's key for us is just being an all-in-one provider, but also guaranteeing uptime in relation to our applications. And then, you know, because we're able to do the all-in-one, because we're able to do the customization of solutions, ultimately we win the deal. And then once we win the deal, as I spoke to you earlier, is providing this conscious-level service that that keeps customers happy and staying with us. And that and it speaks volumes to how long customers have stayed with us for a 20-year-old company. And I think that's how we compete. And um, it's getting partners and customers to trust us on what we're doing and give us that opportunity. And then once we get that opportunity, step it up to plate and really nailing that ball and knock it out of the park, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Well, as we head into the busy holiday season, um, you know, this is more important than ever. Uh, I mean, retailers, pizza companies, automotive dealers, they're in the phone business, uh, the customer communications business, as much as they're in the you know, pizza business. So great work. And onwards and upward, thanks for sharing uh peek behind the curtain.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's been great. Um, you know, we not only we have our own uh a big car dealership we just landed as well, um, which was a 23 location opportunity. Wow. They got primary, they got backup from us, they got a wireless so they could walk out into their locations and actually have to still have access to the internet. They got our unified communication as a service platform. They actually got our contact center platform as well because they had a 15 person. Sales group that actually takes calls and sells. So we're starting to see those opportunities as well, as well. And then we actually just got a huge energy company as well, which was a great win for us. They were on their own same phone service for 18 years and they were reluctant to move. But because we were able to beer some of that old premise-based functionality and what they were looking for, they needed unique rings when certain calls come in about, you know, in relation to trades that needed to happen and things of that nature. Um, we were able to win that business as well with all our technology. And so it's it's been a great run so far. I'm this is um uh you know, me stepping into this role has been so much fun, and we've got a great team behind us, and I'm really looking forward to what we're gonna do from here on out.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, great, great work. Congratulations again, and thanks for sharing the vision.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, Evan. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, and thanks everyone for listening and watching. Also, check out our new TV show on techimpact.tv on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Jason.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Evan. Bye bye. Take care.