CLEC News Briefs

• Phone Home
• Prime Rate
• Just Keeps Growing and Growing

by ISP-Planet Staff [February 5, 2003]

Phone Home
Tampa, Fla.-based Z-Tel Communications (Nasdaq: ZTEL) claimed on Monday that it is the first local phone company to bundle voice recognition with home phone service. The company's press release claimed:

"For example, you might say, 'Call Aunt Susan,' and Personal Voice Assistant will automatically complete the call. Other voice capabilities include sending voice e-mails to individuals or distribution groups in your address book. Simply say, 'Send email to Chuck McBride,' speak your message, and an audio file containing your message will appear in Chuck McBride's email inbox. And, if you need additional information about a contact away from home, you can retrieve a home address, business address or even birth date. You would say, 'Look up Diane Smith's home address,' and PVA would read the street address, city, state, and zip code."

The PVA is powered by Z-Tel's speech recognition platform, which is based on Nuance's speech recognition software, Nuance's VoiceXML-based platform, and SpeechWorks International's Speechify TTS engine.

Additional PVA features include:

Voice enabled dialing—speak the name of the contact and the service will dial the number

Contact updater—asks contacts to update their own information

Distribution lists—enabling users to send voice e-mails to several contacts at once

Remote access—allows users to access features and contact list through any phone or through the Internet

Personalized PVAs for each family member

Find Me—multiple number call forwarding

Notify Me—message notification via e-mail, cell phone, or pager

The service also allows users to share the contents of the address book. The address book can store up to 500 contacts. Pricing of flat rate phone plus Internet bundles plus the PVA was not disclosed at press time.

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Prime Rate

McLean, Va.-based PRIMUS Telecommunications Group (Nasdaq: PRTL) announced that it had reduced its debt by buying bonds on the market. The company said it paid $46.9 million for bonds with a face value (excluding interest payments) of $64.15 million. The purchase reduced annual interest payments by $7.2 million.

Although the company retains a significant debt load, it is optimistic. K. Paul Singh, chairman and CEO of PRIMUS, said, "With these purchases, PRIMUS has reduced the outstanding amount of high yield bonds to $326 million. Significantly, we have purchased slightly over 50 percent of the outstanding bond issue that is due in August, 2004. This development directly addresses the near-term liquidity issues certain investors had raised. We intend to pursue additional initiatives to reduce our debt further."

If you're a CLEC, it seems like a good time to retire debt, especially if the debt carries a high interest rate. Some of PRIMUS' debt due in 2004 carries interest rates as high as 11.75 percent.

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Just Keeps Growing and Growing

Charlotte, N.C.-based US LEC (Nasdaq: CLEC) announced that it continues to grow rapidly. The company says its customer base has more than doubled over the past eight months, to about 4,000 businesses.

In addition, the company said it has completed an upgrade to its system, which will now support additional services. The company installed new CBX Europa software in its 26 Lucent CBX500 ATM switches.

"We have seen the thinking of customers fundamentally change in the last few years," said Aaron Cowell, US LEC president and CEO. "The growth trends traditionally showed customers selecting US LEC for voice services initially, then adding data or Internet products later. Now we see most customers selecting voice and data services simultaneously, and in some cases, choosing US LEC solely for their data needs first, then adding voice services. But we have remained focused, as an integral part of our business plan, on bundling voice and data services for customers and on placing multiple products with each customer. While this strategy obviously results in higher revenue per customer, it also supports and complements our customer loyalty and subsequent retention efforts."

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—End

   

Related articles:
	[Oct. 24, 2002]	US LEC Buys Interpath Customers
	[Sept. 17, 2002]	Primus Acquires C&W's U.S. Retail Customers
	[March 21, 2002]	US LEC Completes Network Software Upgrade