Dialing for dollars

Communications News, Feb, 1998

Many wireless and wireline carriers are looking to replace their existing backbone voice mail systems with new cost-effective systems. They want increased reliability, flexibility, and advanced functionality.

Vanguard Cellular Systems, a cellular carrier headquartered in Greensboro, N.C., is one company whose search resulted in a system that exceeded management's high expectations. Vanguard Cellular, the nation's fourteenth largest cellular company, has more than 500,000 subscribers in 32 different East Coast markets from Maine to Florida. The company's previous voice mail platform, implemented about six years ago, had become increasingly difficult to maintain.

To identify a replacement, Vanguard issued an RFP for a platform that would be tested in the company's Portland, Maine, market. Depending on its success, the platform would then be rolled out, network-wide, to Vanguard's remaining six service areas.

The company decided to standardize its voice mail system on the Oryx enhanced services platform from Priority Call Management, Wilmington, Mass. The platform supports an entire suite of revenue-generating enhanced services in addition to voice mail, yet costs less than competing voice mail-only platforms. And the system can be fully operational in days instead of weeks.

"It was the lowest cost with highest functionality platform we found," says Jeff Baggett, Product Manager, Wireless Intelligent Networks.

Vanguard's plan was to test the system in Maine for several months before making a commitment. However, an emergency situation forced the carrier to move up the timetable.

Shortly after the trial began, one of Vanguard's existing voice mail platforms in Florida was destroyed by lightning, and the company was forced to install a system as fast as possible to minimize service interruptions to customers. Vanguard decided to use Oryx there, too.

"Where other vendors led us to believe that it would take at least one and one-half months to complete an install, Priority Call Management had us up and running in seven days," says Baggett. "Our decision to implement the platform in all of our cities was cinched."

Baggett liked the ease with which the platform integrated with Vanguard's data network. All the enhanced services platforms in the wireless network could be maintained and monitored from one central location. As a result, the technical staffers at each site who previously had to maintain the platforms were now free for other tasks.

The system allows customers to speed up or slow down the play-back of their messages -- or simply skip messages they do not want to listen to. Customers with pagers are notified when a message is left in voice mail.

Vanguard has begun leveraging its new system by developing new enhanced services that differentiate the company, add revenue streams, and fulfill evolving customer needs. The first of these was ShareOne, a one-number service that lets customers have three cell phones ring concurrently when a single number is dialed. This eliminates the need to manually dial multiple numbers for one person. When the customer answers at any one of the three phones, the call is connected to that phone.

"This service was designed for a person who has multiple telephones and wants to receive calls at any one of these phones without inconveniencing callers," Baggett says. "It does not support advanced features such as call screening or transfer of calls to other phones."

While ShareOne took about one year to deploy, Baggett says most of this time was required to develop the billing software and marketing plan. "It only took about two days to program the application on the platform. And we were able to roll out ShareOne at six more sites in just months."

With the next service offering, CallOne, a subscriber can have either three cell phone numbers or two cell numbers and one land-line number ring concurrently when a single cellular number is dialed. When any of the numbers are answered, the subscriber can screen the call and choose to answer it or have it answered by voice mail.

CallOne also uses oryxFAX, which routes faxes to the subscriber's one-number. When the subscriber checks voice mail, this feature announces the number of faxes waiting, the originating telephone numbers, and the number of pages for each fax. The subscriber can then have the system send those faxes to any fax machine.

"These enhanced services empower customers to receive their calls and faxes wherever they happen to be -- and to have greater control over which calls they take." Baggett says. "And, from Vanguard's perspective, subscribers are more likely to use cellular air time in taking their calls, so we derive additional revenue."

Baggett says the services help differentiate Vanguard in highly competitive markets. A larger competitor, for example, offers a one-number service, but it only dials numbers sequentially, not concurrently, and it doesn't support fax or paging.