Sterling-based Neustar has been at the heart of one of the biggest technology revolutions in recent decades, yet it’s a company that few people outside of the telecommunications industry have ever heard of.
(Jeffrey MacMillan/JEFFREY MACMILLAN FOR CAPITAL BUSINESS) - Rashad Smith monitors traffic at the network operations center in Sterling.
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The firm got its start in 1996 by winning a contract to transfer telephone numbers among carriers, allowing customers to switch from one provider to another with little hassle and, in turn, forcing companies to compete more fiercely for their business.
Seventeen years later, that competition is a cornerstone of the industry as consumers chase ever-more-powerful smartphones.
“Number portability is one of those critical behind-the-scenes activities [that’s vital] to a successful communication system,” said Scott Cleland, president of Precursor, an industry analyst. “The fact that we don’t hear about Neustar and problems with number portability is a huge compliment.”
But Neustar faces a challenge common to pioneering technology companies: Finding new engines for growth while working to hang on to its legacy business. That’s especially true as the company prepares to compete again this spring for the contract that started it all.
Today, Neustar counts 1,500 employees scattered from California to Costa Rica to China, quite the increase from the four-person team, then part of Lockheed Martin, that won the initial contract in the mid-’90s.
What’s more, the company has made a concerted effort in recent years to diversify its information and analytics businesses beyond the telecommunications industry. Neustar today offers marketing, cybersecurity and Internet services to retailers, financial institutions and entertainment studios, among others.
Still, the company’s foundational values of neutrality and reliability — not to mention about 50 percent of its revenue — are still deeply rooted in that initial number portability contract.
At the helm of the company is Lisa Hook, a longtime technology executive who knows something about the need for technology companies to refresh themselves. Her résumé includes several years at AOL at the time of its ill-fated merger with Time Warner. She led the company’s broadband division, expanding both its subscribers and revenue.
Now she’s looking to replicate that growth without the crash that AOL later experienced when its Internet subscribers moved on to new Internet providers, leaving the company to redefine itself as an advertising and content provider.
“We have so many possibilities [ for growth], it’s how do we move even faster to enchant our customers and to create solutions that make their lives easier,” Hook said in an interview.
‘BASIS FOR COMPETITION’
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 ushered in sweeping changes to how the nation’s telephone providers do business, effectively tearing down barriers between regional operators and establishing interoperability technical requirements among networks.
The changes gave rise to a concept called “portability” that allowed consumers to retain phone numbers when switching from one telephone provider to another, thus ensuring no customer felt beholden to a company by a simple series of digits.
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