Cincinnati Bell Eyes Expansion

Cincinnati Bell is looking at out-of-territory expansion, possibly in Indiana and likely in Indianapolis, should that prove to be the case. The possible expansion mirrors a trend most incumbent telephone companies now face: growth is a tall order in their traditional service areas, and most are seeing out-of-territory moves as the surest way to gain new customers and revenues.

The implication is that, over time, the percentage of revenue from business customers will increase, as a percentage of total, as such expansions almost always are aimed at business customers.

CEO Jack Cassidy says that while Cincinnati Bell’s incumbent local exchange carrier operations are showing flat revenue and falling voice line counts, the picture was different in its out-of-region operations.

That operation, which now includes the northeastern suburbs of Cincinnati as well as parts of Dayton and eastern Indiana, saw revenue jump 45 percent year-over-year from $6.6 million in the fourth quarter 2006 to $9.6 million. And access lines actually grew, from 50,000 lines in the fourth quarter 2006 to 62,000 at the end of the fourth quarter 2007.

Likewise, the DSL customer base grew from 4,000 at the end of 2006 to 9,000 at the end of 2007. Inside its tradtional territory, Cincinnati Bell lost 7.7 percent of its access lines and also sees slowing DSL growth.

That strategy holds for larger service providers as well, ranging from European telcos and wireless providers to smaller U.S. telcos such as SureWest Communications, to independent U.S. CLECs such as Paetec and metro access providers such as Zayo Bandwidth that continue to amass bigger footprints.