Manager of Voice Engineering at Segra
Segra delivers exceptional voice services, expanding reach and modernizing infrastructure
Segra’s name is inspired by an ancient term meaning “to win,” a fitting reflection of its success across 26 markets and an expansive network exceeding 44,000 fiber route miles.
The company serves voice and data services to a diverse spectrum of customers, spanning various business sizes and infrastructure maturity levels. What unites them is a shared experience of service excellence—Segra’s commitment to consistently delivering exceptional connectivity.
Segra stands out by simplifying how its customers, of any size and sophistication, get connected. It ensures reliable access via its robust fiber network, enabling scalable coverage wherever needed. To date, more than 20,000 customer sites have placed their trust in Segra’s connectivity solutions.
Segra aims to rapidly expand into new markets alongside its customers while modernizing infrastructure with the partner who makes its everyday operations easier and cost-effective.
Prioritizing scale without losing customer focus
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering at Segra and a company veteran of over 20 years, reflects on the evolution of their voice services:
“We started our VoIP offerings probably about 15 or so years ago. We were probably one of the first, with the Broadsoft platform. Now everything’s IP, so our marching orders are to migrate off of the very costly and inefficient TDM trunking.”
While Segra is committed to elevating its infrastructure to industry-leading standards, it recognizes that each customer’s needs are unique.
“We’ve pretty much covered it all, from mom and pop places all the way to multi-state agencies. We’re flexible enough to meet the needs of smaller customers. But scalable to where we can meet the demands of larger customers.”
Providing exceptional service to all customers requires Segra to be more than just a provider; it demands a partner. And the Segra team is not averse to getting their hands dirty with customer infrastructure, Roger explains why Segra’s clients remain loyal:
“We help them solve their problems by not only giving them a custom solution, but a lot of customers have their own infrastructure, their own equipment. So if we provide SIP trunking or SIP lines or an application and routers or even just a pipe, we get it working with their equipment and their vendors.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
To maintain this competitive advantage, Segra needs an ally who can:
Easily accommodate growing fiber connectivity with robust VoIP services
Deliver consolidation efficiencies that eliminate scaling challenges
Enhance operational efficiency by reducing costs and saving time
Extending 911 and superior connectivity to more customers without fuss
Segra’s partnership with Bandwidth dates back to the early stages of its VoIP offerings.
“Bandwidth has been an integral partner in opening up new markets, and allowing us to stretch our legs into places where we have the fiber connectivity.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
Segra has seen significant benefits, particularly through SIP consolidation across Segra’s network footprint. In Charlottesville, Virginia—one of Segra’s largest markets—the team successfully ported every single subscriber to Bandwidth, routing the traffic for all ~33,000 numbers through this connection. Bandwidth also serves as Segra’s primary carrier for domestic long-distance calls.
“Negotiating ICAs with local carriers and turning up TDM trunks would have taken years to complete and the costs of TDM trunking alone would be over $200K per year. And there’s been an economy of scale there. We can serve all those markets from one place, but we still get rates based on the number of subscribers and the number of minutes that we do across our entire network.”
The resulting cost and time efficiencies have prompted Segra to consolidate all of its 911 customers to Bandwidth and have been using this single solution for 5 years. Instead of maintaining individual connections to each Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), it now manages a single connection to Bandwidth, which as Roger emphasizes, has proven to be exceptionally reliable.
“It has saved us money by allowing us to turn down circuits required to serve 911 and get it all in one place. That’s been huge, not only in cost savings, it’s been a lot less work to maintain.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
Doubling down on cost and operations
Segra’s and its customers’ growth are underpinned by significant cost savings and operational efficiencies, two areas that are usually challenged during technological transitions.
Historically, Segra’s legacy 911 infrastructure necessitated the establishment of multiple interconnects and the simultaneous management of numerous local trunks. Through transition and consolidation, Segra has eliminated these complexities and decommissioned costly TDM trunks.
“Over the course of this service, we have saved at least $50K on the cost of the 911 trunking alone.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
This shift is complemented by the Bandwidth App that streamlines everything from provisioning to troubleshooting. Roger talks about how Bandwidth’s universal platform has helped Segra deliver different voice services to multiple markets spread across geographic regions with a tight team and ease of delivery.
“We can turn up a single trunk to serve a state or even an entire geographic region and just send that traffic one-stop shop to Bandwidth. The portal is one place where our customer care could go and do all the provisioning and take care of any issues. It’s been a simplicity thing as much as it’s been a cost-saving initiative.”
The Bandwidth App has expedited daily telecom processes that previously required multiple teams and numerous handoffs just to provision a single customer order.
“The Bandwidth portal is very, very simple. It doesn’t matter what market. It’s all a one-stop shop. Provisioning the customer, regardless of where they are, is absolutely simple.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
The migration from distributed local tandems to SIP trunking has accelerated rapidly. Maintaining copper and TDM trunks had become prohibitively expensive for Segra and in turn, its customers. Transitioning to SIP trunking has been a transformative cost-saving initiative across the board.
Roger shares an example of their long-haul trunk from Charleston to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Retaining these facilities wasn’t cost-effective for Segra and costs were growing exponentially, more than doubling in 6 months in one instance.
“We’re talking thousands of dollars per month. We put those numbers to Bandwidth, eliminated those high-cost trunks, and still service those customers. That was a really big cost savings for us. And we’re still able to market and grow in those areas, although we don’t have the facility costs that we used to. ”
The power of partnership drives scalable success
While reliability remains a top priority for Segra, it is rarely a concern.
“As far as reliability goes (of 911 services), I cannot recall any issues that we’ve had with it. It’s been extraordinarily reliable. Bandwidth and Segra collectively took the care to engineer it properly on turn up and watched capacity on it,” explains Roger.
The deep collaboration between both teams gives Segra the confidence to expand and launch services in new regions. Equally important is the proactive communication from Bandwidth regarding changes in the regulatory environment, which has enabled Segra to avoid potential obstacles in scaling.
“Bandwidth reached out to us recently about the new emergency FCC regulations. I’m glad that Bandwidth brought it to us so that we could get in front of it.”
From a strategic perspective, the lockstep partnership significantly shapes Segra’s approach to service deployment across its rapidly expanding fiber network. Roger emphasizes this while reflecting on past experience with activating and migrating subscribers on the Charlottesville switch.
“It would not have been possible to turn up and migrate all the subscribers without Bandwidth. This strategy is the new model for deploying services into new territories. Segra has the fiber, and Bandwidth has the coverage and capabilities that we need to expand.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
Entering a dynamic phase of growth
Segra’s mission for growth extends beyond scale alone; it is about growing intelligently with a modern, reliable infrastructure that delivers comprehensive connectivity solutions through a single point of access.
Partnering through Spirit Communications’ and Lumos Networks’ to form Segra, Bandwidth has become a critical component of Segra’s scaling strategy. The merger brought a significant influx of new CLEC customers onto Segra’s primary switch in Charlottesville. Segra’s integration plan included leveraging Bandwidth’s trunking and port capacity to service these customers, eliminating the need for connections to Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) in the region.
“It would have taken us probably a couple of years just to get the interconnect agreements in place. We leveraged Bandwidth’s coverage and services as part of our plan to migrate tens of thousands of customers onto our network in a relatively short period of time.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
Roger anticipates this approach will continue to drive growth. Following Segra’s merger with Unite Private Networks, the company has acquired new markets in 17 additional states, significantly expanding its fiber network. This expansion lays the foundation for delivering extensive, redundant, end-to-end voice and data services from a single source—a key competitive advantage.
To accelerate topline growth, Segra plans to leverage its partnership with Bandwidth to enter new markets where fiber facilities are available and to tap into currently underserved areas.
“Bandwidth’s footprint is going to allow us to connect to so many more people. I was looking over Bandwidth’s list of rate centers, and it’s extensive.”
Roger Schroppe, Manager of Voice Engineering
Bandwidth also remains a trusted partner in realizing bottom-line efficiencies by targeting high-cost areas and reducing circuit expenses.
“We’re targeting some of the high-cost areas and turning down circuits that are cost-intensive to reduce those costs. And that part of the blueprint is our partnership with Bandwidth,” Roger concludes.