The other difference, he said, is bringing in the Agent Alliance as a partner. “Going back to 1999, I learned that you can’t do it yourself,” Twomey said. He noted that the Agent Alliance members heavily influenced the final structure of the program, but they also impact TNCI’s valuation by virtue of their strategic sales power. “By having such a strategic relationship and a measurable percentage of control of the channel when working with that group, that could take you from seven or eight to nine or 10 times the EBITDA number,” he said.

Other Agent Equity Plan Payouts

One of the earliest known agent equity programs was sponsored by Unidial, now Lightyear. In summer 2001, Lightyear paid an equity disbursement in excess of $6 million to each of its "founding agents" after a merger with VarTec Telecom Inc. Those "founding agents" enrolled in the original Unidial equity program at a fee of $25,000 in 2004.

In spring 2003, switchless reseller Telcorp Ltd. issued agent equity payments after its acquisition by NUI Telecom, the telecom unit of energy company NUI Corp. Payouts ranged from $25,000 to $700,000, or 12.5 percent to 65 percent of an agents contribution to the company's revenue. Interestingly, the Telcorp equity program was begun in 1999 with the help of agents Gene Foster and Daryl Heller, who are today members of the Agent Alliance.

More recently, the acquisition of CLEC Mpower Communications Corp. by rival TelePacific Communications in summer 2006  triggered more than $500,000 in payouts to Mpower agents that earned warrants in the company. Mpower issued 1,054,576 warrants to agents since the program began in October 2003.