Cincinnati Bell taps ETI to migrate business customers from T1 to fiber services

Cincinnati Bell is leveraging ETI Software Solutions' circuit management module to migrate existing T1 copper based business customers to fiber, a process that has worked well for residential customers migrating from DSL to its FTTH-based Fioptics products.

T1 circuit management module allows Cincinnati Bell to automatically reprovision T1 copper records to its existing FTTH technologies.

Similar to its larger ILEC counterparts AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Cincinnati Bell is keen to drive more of its business customer base off of legacy T-1 circuits to fiber-based Ethernet and optical wavelength services.

Having already worked together on various projects that helped Cincinnati Bell grow its fiber network capabilities, including video, voice and data provisioning via multiple interfaces, ETI was able to deliver the solution to the telco in a short time frame.

Besides providing IP-based provisioning and support, ETI will also deliver prepaid television capabilities and expand Cincinnati Bell's OTT platform. An extended technical support and subscriber license agreement was also completed.

While it won't announce fourth quarter 2015 earnings until Feb. 18, fiber has become a key element in Cincinnati Bell's strategic service mix. In the third quarter, Cincinnati Bell reported that strategic business revenue was $44 million -- including $3 million of Fioptics revenue -- for the quarter, up $4 million year-over-year after excluding revenue for services provided to its wireless operations.

Being able to quickly migrate existing business customers to fiber, particularly small to medium businesses that could only get copper-based solutions, will enable Cincinnati Bell to potentially thwart emerging threats from the area's cable operator Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), which has been able to win over customers with higher speed services leveraging its existing DOCSIS-based service.

Leigh Fox, CFO of Cincinnati Bell told investors in December that cable has "been more competitive on the small business side because of their products and we're now becoming more competitive with the deployment of fiber."

For more:
- see the release

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