ou have great deals, top-of-the-line equipment and the best rates to pass on to your merchants. When you're looking for additional services or products to add to your magic bag of tricks, that one special thing that will really set you apart from the competition, are you ever at a loss?

Covad Communications has a few good ideas for you.

Have you considered selling broadband Internet access services?

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Covad was the first nationwide digital subscriber line (DSL) provider and has worked quietly but diligently over the past five years to offer the highest-quality broadband access, including DSL and T1. In fact, even with little or no money spent on advertising, the company's sales have been doubling every quarter, according to Ivan Montoya, Director of Channel Marketing, and Covad has more than 350,000 broadband customers across the country.

Covad Communications provides a full range of high-speed connectivity solutions and has a partner program in place that lets you offer your customers the exact service option their specific needs require. It has set out to make taking and placing orders - and making money for their reseller partners - as uncomplicated as possible.

Along with the high-speed access, "we make it as easy as possible to sell our services. For example, placing orders has been a nightmare with other companies," Montoya said. "When you buy broadband services through Covad, the orders are placed directly with us. We provide marketing materials and collateral that makes it easier to sell the service.

"The reseller becomes the customer's hero."

If hero-worship isn't exactly your thing, maybe the one-time commission of up to $1,500 per installed business line each time reselling partners sell a Covad solution will grab your attention.

Covad is a single source for broadband, ISP, e-mail and Web-hosting services, managed security solutions and customer support and billing. They have established a national footprint, which can accommodate multi-location opportunities. There are tools available online to track accounts and to assist in the self-installation process.

Montoya said that through the company's Alliance Partnerships Program, Covad is expanding its outreach efforts to value-added resellers.

"These are definitely cross-industry products. They're all flavors of the same thing, with a variety of options available tailored to meet the needs the type of use will require. A small business enterprise or individual would buy DSL service, or ADSL, which is self-installed and consumer-oriented with faster downloads. Our business class services are T1, SDSL and IDSL, and at these levels we are able to guarantee higher bandwidth speeds, which are often critical in a business environment.

"We are targeted toward the small business market. Real estate agencies, accounting services and even some customers with outbound telesales departments use Covad to connect to the Internet. We have a restaurant chain with 800 different locations across the country that uses us to provide the means to download their POS and financial information to the corporate headquarters. This is a huge thing for us."

What exactly is broadband? Bandwidth is measured in bits per second. Phone lines are divided into different frequencies, with phone calls and standard phone modem Internet connections sharing one narrow area. Internet access via phone modems is limited to speeds of up to 56 kilobits per second. Broadband services, including DSL, ADSL and IDSL, use the additional, unused frequencies already on the existing phone lines to transmit data at a much faster rate.

T1 lines use a separate technology that provides a dedicated, direct network connection at a speed of 1.5 megabits per second for both downloads and uploads.

Broadband services offer a number of advantages over dial-up and cable connections. Having DSL guarantees users a minimum connection speed and constant, always-on access, meaning you don't have to wait for the modem to dial up and make a connection to the ISP. Make and receive phone calls and use DSL, all on one phone line - if you want to use your telephone while you're online using a modem, you're out of luck unless you have a separate phone line for the computer. Broadband services also offer the benefit of a static IP address.

The speed depends not only on the type of broadband service purchased but also can be determined by the distance between the customer and the "central office," as Montoya called Covad's service-origination stations. Covad has coverage in all of the major metropolitan areas, with the largest central offices.

"We have 2,000 central offices around the country," he said. Covad owns and manages all Covad network equipment co-located on specific telephone companies' properties. Covad maintains all their equipment, ensuring it is up-to-date and always up-and-running. "Our physical equipment is all situated on locations owned by the phone company. We are the DSL provider. We manage all aspects of the service.

"DSL depends on having an infrastructure in place in a particular area, and service depends on having access to a central office. T1 services are not limited so much by location to a central office - if you're 20 miles away, you may have some problems. You can be up to eight miles away and get some sort of DSL service. IDSL service allows you to be up to 40,000 feet away; our other services have a radius of 8,000 to 15,000 feet."

Covad's business-class services offer affordable, flat-rate billing, which means customers don't pay "per-minute" charges based on their distance from the central office. ADSL, SDSL and T1 services are always on, which means employee productivity is not affected waiting for the connection to happen. The SDSL service supports up to 50 computers on a single Covad business line; the ADSL service for small or home offices supports up to four computers per line.

"We have a couple of ways we're growing right now," he explained. "Through our product marketing efforts, we focus on the various Internet access products we sell. Through our channel marketing efforts, we're growing sales and reaching new markets.

"Our sales team works with value-added resellers to develop the program and recruit partners. Our focus has been on serving our partners from the beginning. We currently have 500 Alliance Partners working in multiple industries, and we're inviting more to join our program. We want our partners to make money, and it's easy to make money with our online tools - they're assigned a rep, we provide training and education, and all of the marketing tools are there. Covad products are great for our partners' customers and keep them more productive.

"Our sales team works with value-added resellers to develop the program and recruit partners. Our main marketing strategy is in supporting our partners. We're really motivated and focused on making our partners successful. There are huge benefits for resellers. We have so much confidence in our products."