About Cincinnati Bell
Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE: CBB) is one of the most respected and best performing local exchange and wireless providers in the US, with a legacy of unparalleled customer service excellence.
Cincinnati Bell provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services to residential and business customers in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Key growth areas for Cincinnati Bell include wireless, technology solutions and DSL.
For more information, go to: www.cincinnatibell.com
The Need: To Prepare for SMS Traffic Increases and Enhance SMS Services
Just as highways can be well designed to enable vehicular traffic to flow freely even during peak-usage hours, foresight and planning can ensure an ample infrastructure for the unimpeded flow of SMS traffic.
Operating with a legacy competitor SMSC, Cincinnati Bell foresaw that in order to meet rapidly expanding user demand and evolving market needs, there was a necessity to take action to handle expected significant increases in text messaging traffic — as well as to enable quick deployment of enhanced SMS features and services to increase user satisfaction and take advantage of market opportunities.
Cincinnati Bell saw the need to move to a more robust and feature-rich SMS system with a long-term roadmap vision.
Challenge: To Maintain and Increase SMS ARPU
As is true for operators in virtually all regions around the world, SMS is one of the most popular value-added services offered by Cincinnati Bell and is consequently a major source of revenue and user satisfaction.
The challenge was to ensure the best possible SMS user experience by enabling capacity to scale up to accommodate all foreseeable need, to lay the groundwork for rapid deployment of new SMS feature enhancements, and to hold the line on OPEX by means of operational efficiencies.
Solution: Comverse SMSC Improves the User Experience and Keeps Traffic Flowing
Cincinnati Bell deployed Comverse SMSC to replace the legacy competitor SMSC.
Comverse SMSC helps operators meet their ever-evolving needs with a comprehensive range of innovative, flexible and highly scalable SMS solutions based on an open, standards-based, IMS-ready SMS environment, ensuring easy integration with third parties and smooth migration from legacy systems to next-generation networks.
Comverse’s innovative SMS environment and effective SMS services and personalization applications are designed to increase data ARPU and optimize network capital investment and operating expense.
Why Selected: Comverse Global Success, Local Presence
Cincinnati Bell replaced their legacy SMS platform to better service their wireless subscriber base now and in the future. They selected the Comverse SMSC for a number of reasons, including:
- Global Success: Cincinnati Bell will benefit from Comverse’s worldwide experience and leadership in the SMS space. Comverse SMSC is one of the most successful SMS solutions — Comverse SMS systems supported 1 trillion messages in 2005 and 1.5 trillion in 2006 from more than 200 leading service providers and 500 million end users worldwide.
- Powerful: Comverse SMSC serves operators with some of the heaviest usage in the world, for example in the Philippines and in China.
- Complete Solution: The Comverse SMS solution includes a complete portfolio of products, such as SMS Accelerate™, SMS Personal, SMS Shield, USSD Center and SMS Router.
- Support and Service: Cincinnati Bell’s successful experience over many years with Comverse call completion solutions has demonstrated that Comverse’s high standards of product quality are matched by equally high and consistent standards of service and support.
Roger Werth, Director of Core Network Planning and Engineering at Cincinnati Bell said, “Our team sought a proven and reliable SMS solution that would allow us to improve our SMS offering now and expand our messaging portfolio in the future. The Comverse solution stood out above the rest due to its reliable service, rich feature-set and service roadmap.”
“As a satisfied customer of other Comverse solutions, we trust that their expertise, vision, technology and dedication to our goals will enable us to provide our customers with an outstanding messaging experience that can help ensure customer satisfaction and retention,” continued Werth.
Results: A Proven SMS Solution that Meets Current and Future Needs
Cincinnati Bell deployed Comverse SMSC in October 2006. Deployment adhered closely to the specific preferences and needs of the operator, and the legacy competitor SMS platform was replaced seamlessly in a manner entirely transparent to users, with no service loss. Comverse has accrued significant experience in seamless switch-overs from its extensive replacements of legacy systems around the world.
The move to Comverse SMSC enables the operator to personalize the SMS user experience, quickly deploy enhanced SMS features and services, and seamlessly scale up to support expected traffic increases.
Cincinnati Bell is the leading wireless provider in its geographic market and with the Comverse SMS solution they now have the ability to better meet consumer demand as their subscriber traffic increases in the future.
“Cincinnati Bell is happy to have in place a proven and reliable SMS solution that meets our current and future needs to ensure customer satisfaction and retention,” concluded Werth.