Cbeyond Intros Wireless

ATLANTA -- Cbeyond, (Nasdaq: CBEY), a managed services provider to small businesses and a leader in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), today launched BeyondMobile, a mobile voice and data offering, making it the first communications provider to offer a complete bundle of communications services targeted specifically to small businesses. Cbeyond already offers a complete package of managed services, including VoIP, security, messaging, collaboration and storage.

Cbeyond is offering BeyondMobile as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), but with a different approach to bundling and billing voice calling minutes. Because Cbeyond offers landline, Internet and now mobile services, it bundles all calling minutes together, including long distance, toll-free and mobile. Its small business customers can apply any unused landline minutes to their mobile service and vice versa for free. The sharing of minutes is seamless and requires no intervention from the business owner. Cbeyond also lets small businesses pool all mobile minutes across employees so there's no need to juggle different rate plans.

Even if businesses go over their allotted minutes, Cbeyond does not apply steep overage charges--additional minutes for long distance and mobile are just six cents each. As a result, Cbeyond's customers receive more value from the bundled offering than they would if they purchased services a la carte from a myriad of other providers.

"This is the number one service our customers have asked us for," says Brent Cobb, vice president of Mobile Services for Cbeyond. "We serve entrepreneurs and small businesses exclusively and created BeyondMobile to satisfy their unique needs, including a consultative sale, the ability to apply unused long-distance minutes to their mobile service and to pool calling minutes across all employees."

"No other carriers are going after the small business market with a solution like this," says Iain Gillot, president and founder of iGillottResearch, a market research consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry. "Typically, small businesses are lumped in with consumers. Cbeyond is providing these entrepreneurs with a level of service that traditionally only the large enterprises have come to expect."

The BeyondMobile service is nationwide with no roaming charges. Customers receive a consolidated bill for all of the landline and mobile communications services and have only one number to call for support.

"With Cbeyond's BeyondMobile service, we don't have to stand in line at a wireless retail store to set up our cell phones--something I don't have time for anyway," said Steve George, COO of Barcode ID Systems, a technology solution provider headquartered in Atlanta. "Instead, I receive a personal consultation at my office. And now all my communications costs will be predictable each month since I can share both my landline and mobile minutes and pool them among my employees."

Cbeyond Communications (Nasdaq: CBEY)