AireSpring is pleased to announce that Russ Shipley has assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO). A well-known and respected industry icon with a career that spans decades, Russ brings deep experience to his new role at AireSpring.

Many of you know Russ and may have worked with him at times throughout his career. Prior to joining AireSpring, Russ held a variety of executive positions at TPx (formerly TelePacific), most recently serving as Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Before joining TPx, Russ served as President of Wholesale, Chief Network Services and New Technology Officer at Mpower Communications. Russ has also held several leadership positions at other prominent companies such as Global Crossing, Frontier Corporation, and Rochester Telephone.

"Russ is a deeply experienced leader and we are excited to welcome him to the AireSpring Team," stated AireSpring CEO Avi Lonstein. "AireSpring is a rapidly evolving, dynamic organization that will benefit greatly from his expertise as we continue to chart a course for growth," added Lonstein. "His strategic vision, tactical leadership and deep knowledge of every facet of the industry will be a tremendous asset in helping AireSpring execute on our goal of delivering the best, unequaled service and support."

"AireSpring's relentless focus and devotion to delighting customers and partners with outstanding, personalized support is renown in the industry," stated Russ Shipley. "Our strategic plans for continued innovation and automation, laser focused on providing unparalleled service to customers and partners, will position AireSpring for even greater success. I'm thrilled to be joining this talented team and look forward to contributing my expertise to help lead the company on a path to future success."

Join AireSpring for an overview of IT Security.

Get AireSpring Security Certified and earn a

$50 Amazon Gift Card in the process.

• Hear about the $1 Trillion dollar threat landscape.
• Learn about the 7 Types of Threat Actors and the damage they can cause.
• Understand legacy security terms & functionalities, cybersecurity history, and the origin of firewalls.
• Delve into SIP and wireless security.
• Illustrate how to develop a security mindset and adapt that to new technologies.
• Learn about Gartner's Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) -- the new security paradigm sweeping all major vendors.

Most importantly we will show you how to put a secure infrastructure into action by leveraging AireSpring's managed security solutions that give you visibility, encryption, cloud scale and private transport to deal with a borderless, ever changing network environment with secure communications.

Anything that is not secure, is not truly usable.

Space is limited!

Deadline to Register is Wednesday March 9, 2022.

Reserve your spot and your Amazon gift card now!

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BOOT CAMP IS ONLY OPEN TO CHANNEL PARTNERS. SUPPLIERS ARE NOT ELIGIBLE TO ATTEND.

All attendees must register in advance!

Questions? Please contact Tony Venturella ( tony.venturella@airespring.com)

If you are interested in becoming a partner, please contact Scott.Hailey@AireSpring.com

February Promo: Celebrate Presidents Day the AireSpring Way

Enjoy AireSpring's February promo where we celebrate President's Day in a different way by offering industry-leading bonuses, spiffs and commissions!

In addition to great spiffs and evergreen commissions, you can always count on AireSpring's stable, family-owned, and operated business with its culture of competing with high-touch customer service and support. Stability counts but so do industry-leading spiffs and evergreen commissions. Unlike other suppliers, AireSpring even offers spiffs on renewals!

As always, enjoy our year-round Concierge Support from our experienced award-winning Channel Sales Team who are only compensated when YOU close business and win new clients ahead of the competition!

Our expert Channel Managers are highly trained and specialize in AireSpring's brand of knowledgeable, dedicated White Glove Service with the entire AireSpring solutions engineering, service delivery, and support team behind them. Let us help you win more deals in 2022 with competitive prices and the fastest quotes in the industry.

AireSpring's expert managed services and award-winning products keep the rewards coming, as you enjoy:

• 1X MRC on SD-WAN
• 1X MRC on Global SD-WAN
• 6X MRC on Voice/Cloud Services
• 1.5X MRC on Connectivity Services & MPLS
• $1600 Cash Bonus on Toll-Free Services
• $800 Cash Bonus on LD Services
• 5% EXTRA Bonus Residual Commission on AireSpring Network & SIP LD underlying it all.

Please contact your AireSpring Channel Manager for details.

AireSpring kicked off the year with its first Partner Appreciation Event of 2022 at the NASCAR Hall of Fame (NHOF) in Charlotte, NC. Regional Channel Director, Joe Brondon, and Regional Channel Manager (TN, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS), Jesse Michael, revved up AireSpring's sales engines at NHOF with a number of partners from NC, SC, PA, MI and TN. Joe and Jesse shared the latest updates from AireSpring over lunch followed by a tour of the museum where guests got to experience the pit crew simulator.

Twenty years of business has led to so many great partnerships that we want to celebrate in 2022. Follow AireSpring on LinkedIn and make sure you're on our email distribution list for news on upcoming events. We are hoping to touch every region that has impacted our business to show our thanks for your support. We would not be the company we are without our amazing partners.

I am a telecom old-timer. I started my career working for equipment vendors selling phone systems all the way from paging and intercom to key systems and PBXs - customer premises equipment (CPE). I migrated over to network services when I joined Centex Telemanagement which is a provider of telecommunications management services to small and medium-sized businesses. The company provides communication services and is a preferred reseller of all ESI phone systems and equipment, which include PBX phone systems, VoIP business phone systems, SIP phone systems and key phone systems. At Centex, we offered telecommunications management services by utilizing Colorado- based Centrex as the delivery vehicle. Centex later became a nationwide company, creating the foundation for what is now known as Hosted VoIP.

I left Centex and joined Ecomnetrix as their VP of Sales where I managed their customer accounts. Then in 2003, Ecomnetrix sold their telecommunication customer base. We primarily focused on the California market and built an independent channel of agents, most of whom were CPE vendors. After the sale of that company, we started G2 Solutions and we continued to manage telecom services, teaming up with CPE vendors and independent agents to continue offering network services. Our independent agents continue selling CPE and engage us in every opportunity they have as it relates to Voice and Data services. We later migrated over to encompass all services from voice to data to mobile and hosted services.

What do you like about working with AireSpring?

G2 Solutions signed with several master agencies which gave us access to a multitude of services and providers. Our history with AireSpring began in the mid-2000s. As AireSpring expanded its compensation program, we engaged with them more and more, quoting them on many new opportunities that came our way. We enjoy working with our channel manager Chris Abbott [Regional Channel Manager, AireSpring] who is very knowledgeable. Chris has done a tremendous job in supporting us. He is easily accessible and very accommodating and provides competitive pricing.

What would you say is the secret to being a successful trusted advisor/sales agent in today's marketplace?

Service. At G2 Solutions, we position ourselves as a Single Point of Contact and as a Single Source Provider for our customers. We do the research and resourcing and then propose multiple options for every service the customer may need, thus eliminating the need for those companies to do the sourcing themselves.

Furthermore, all they have to do is make one call to us and we will manage the service needs from beginning to end. From proposal to signature to installation and support and beyond, G2 has become a trusted advisor and as such we get engaged in new technologies as they become available.

What do you foresee happening in the industry in 2022? What is the "next big thing" you think trusted advisors/agents should be aware of or get involved in etc. in 2022?

There are several technologies which will become more prominent in 2022:

5G

5G promises some dramatic changes. With AT&T and Verizon rolling out their 5G networks this year, coverage is increasing and will keep growing through 2025. In addition to being able to support a hundredfold increase in connected devices per each unit area, 5G will offer ultra-low latency, improved data rates and enable network slicing. This opens the door for new services, network operation and customer experience for telecom operators.

5G will change telecom's role: telecoms will not only be technology distributors, but also service providers. This shift will require telecoms to engage with governments, enterprise customers and alter their sales approach to help customers leverage the power of 5G.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Telecommunications is one of the industries that highly leverages artificial intelligence in many aspects of business today. Through virtual assistants and chatbots, and the artificial intelligence that runs these tools behind the scenes, telecommunications companies improve customer service and satisfaction. Artificial intelligence is essential for the optimization and predictive maintenance of telecommunications companies' networks. AI is also hard at work detecting fraudulent activity. Additionally, through predictive analytics, artificial intelligence makes it possible for telecoms to glean actionable business insights from the volumes of data they gather every day.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Because the telecom industry enables internet device connectivity, it is one of the largest players in the Internet of Things market. Everyday items that are connected to one another and the internet are pervasive. Internet of Things technology helps telecoms monitor base stations and data centers remotely. This helps ensure minimal downtime for the network. Since telecom is so instrumental in providing IoT infrastructure, the industry is uniquely poised to develop and offer their own services for IoT. Since IoT technology results in more devices on the network there are more opportunities for security and privacy breaches to occur so telecoms need to plan and prepare defenses for that. While there are still a lot of unknowns regarding the transformation IoT will have for telecoms, there's little doubt that it will disrupt the industry.

What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of telecom?

I am an avid cyclist. A few years ago, I migrated to indoor cycling and was actively using spin classes as often as I could. Unfortunately, Covid changed that for me when the gyms closed. Now that things are opening up again, I am resuming my spinning activity.

Additionally, I enjoy yard work every opportunity I have. We also like to travel and often visit our grandkids in Southern California.

Tell us about your professional background.

I have over twenty plus years' experience in the industry. In 2002 I started my own business, Komon Communications Inc., selling telecom on premise and hosted solutions. I grew my business to a strong customer base of over six hundred. That was my first experience in channel sales as an agent teaming up with several master agencies selling services to my customers. In 2014 I changed roles briefly and went to work for Alcatel Lucent, now Nokia, as an IP Multimedia Subsystem or IMS network level test engineer for large enterprise networks. Then in 2016, I joined Birch Communications, now Fusion, as a Solutions Engineer on their indirect sales team. Finally, I joined AireSpring in July 2019 as a Regional Channel manager based in Chicago, IL.

Tell us about your role/work at AireSpring and your goals.

As a Regional Channel Manager at AireSpring, my responsibilities have been to work with our many channel partners to bring the best services to their customers, making sure everything is handled as close to perfection as possible. Being 100% partner focused is a huge responsibility. My efforts help ensure we offer the best plans to make the partner happy and profitable as well as keeping their customer completely satisfied for years to come. I enjoy training agents and partners on our real-time, online quoting tool, QuoteSpring, where they can leverage our APIs with over 20 major carriers and cable companies to run their own quotes in minutes. My role is very challenging and never boring. Customers get white glove treatment, agents and partners are always well taken care of and I always have direct access to our engineering team to assist and help close deals for our partners very quickly and accurately. Relationships with my partners have been close and I enjoy that very much.

What do you enjoy most about working at AireSpring?

I really enjoy working with all the amazing people at AireSpring. It is like family here, and I enjoy working with everyone from the channel, wholesale, and partner focused Account Management teams, to our extremely knowledgeable Solutions Engineering team, as well as our special pricing, sales support, project management, tech support, and marketing departments, and the list goes on. We all work together to keep everything running smoothly and I can pick up the phone and call any of our hundreds of employees and talk about the next opportunity. John Young, SVP-Channel Sales, knows what he is doing and has an amazing team of Channel Managers ‒it is like playing on a winning super bowl team every day.

What are some of your hobbies or interests outside of the office?

Primarily, I am a family man and very close to both my daughters. Kelly is attending Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego working on her Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy, along with managing a coffee shop in Ocean Beach called OB Beans. My other daughter, Sarah, graduated with honors in biology at Wheaton College and is working at Loyola Medical Center Emergency Room saving lives and also applying at Medical Schools. My hobbies are studying and playing drums, golf and going to muscle car shows. I am part of a local church in my hometown of Naperville.

I started drumming about 18 years ago for my love of music and keeping a healthy mind and body. I have studied with some of the great drumming teachers including 7-time Grammy award winner Paul Wertico who was the drummer for the famous Pat Metheny Group jazz band for many years. Paul is now Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of the Performing Arts.

I am currently studying with Carl Allen, who has played drums with many famous jazz musicians during his career such as Freddie Hubbard and Christian McBride. Carl Allen joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2001 and became the Artistic Director of Jazz Studies in 2008. He is also currently Endowed Chair of Jazz Studies at University of Missouri in Kansas City.

I also do some acting from time to time, working as a stand-in on set for some TV stars. I've appeared in 14 plus episodes of Chicago Fire-Chicago Med-Chicago PD. I started in a background scene for Chicago Fire which led to more. The director asked me to be a stand-in for some of the actors on all 3 shows.

I did stand in for several actors like Jesse Lee Soffer on Chicago PD and Chicago Med's Howard Hesseman who is known for his work on the show WKRP in Cincinnati. I also stood in for Chicago Med actor Frank Whaley. We both got food poisoning from the catering truck that day and coincidently I was his stand-in for a scene where he was drunk and vomiting in the hospital ER. I did several others as well.

When I can find the time, I feed my passion and love of muscle cars. I have loved them since I was a kid. My dad unknowingly started my passion when he bought me a used 1973 Dodge Challenger when I was in high school so I would stop asking for his car. After that I bought a Road Runner and then a Firebird. I wish I still had that Challenger, but now I just enjoy them at the shows.

Finally, golf is another passion of mine. I play as often as my schedule permits. I caddied in the Western Open once and learned that I will never be able to play like the Pros.

AireSpring is an award-winning provider of Managed Connectivity and Cloud Communications solutions providing fully managed and connected end-to-end, next-generation solutions for multi-location enterprise customers, including:

• AirePBX UCaaS
• MPLS Mesh
• SD-WAN
• Global Managed SD-WAN
• SIP Trunking
• Managed Firewall
• Dedicated Internet Access
• Analog/PRI/POTS
• Wholesale Long Distance

AireSpring's services are delivered over its revolutionary nationwide MPLS Mesh Network, providing customers a fully integrated, end-to-end solution from a single vendor.

sales@airespring.com | 888.389.2899 | www.airespring.com