Among the gathering hordes of hungry mobile virtual network operators, nearly all are angling for a bite of the 18-to-34-year-old demographic. But one MVNO launching this week, BeyondMobile, is taking a different tack, targeting small businesses.
The wireless service is being offered by an Atlanta-based Voice over Internet Protocol company called Cbeyond, which said it aims to serve a market of small businesses that falls between the cracks of existing cellular offerings because they are too big to use family plans, yet don’t have enough users to successfully negotiate special packages from large carriers.
Brent Cobb, Cbeyond’s vice president and general manager for wireless, says the 7-year-old company has more than 20,000 customers representing about 250,000 end users in the six metropolitan areas that it serves: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston and Los Angeles. Cbeyond said it seeks out small businesses with between five and 249 employees; Cbeyond’s average customer has 12 employees.
The company is primarily a VoIP and high-speed Internet provider that manages its own private Cisco Systems Inc. network. Cbeyond outfits each of its customers with a T1 line for Internet and phone services and offers its own voice mail, e-mail, Web hosting, fax-to-e-mail services and customer support, with an average of 4.7 applications used by each customer, according to Cobb. Now, he says, the company’s goal is to get every one of its customers to add wireless to that package.
“Wireless is the No. 1 product that our customers have been asking for,” Cobb said. “They want a single solutions provider. They know that we manage their other services, and they want us to manage this one as well.”
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Cbeyond’s offering is that it treats wireless and VoIP long-distance minutes essentially the same. The company includes 1,500 minutes of long distance in its basic $500 monthly package. That package includes up to five lines, and customers get another 500 minutes with each $40 line they add, whether that line is wireless or VoIP.
If a customer doesn’t use all 1,500 long-distance minutes, the rest can be used for wireless conversations. If customers go over their allotted minutes, additional minutes-whether VoIP long-distance or wireless-are charged at the same rate, of 6 cents per minute. That’s a substantial difference from wireless plans for small businesses offered by national carriers, whose overage charges can range as high as 40 cents per minute.
Cobb, who used to work for SK-EarthLink (now soon-to-launch MVNO Helio), sees his company’s offering as one of the first moves toward “truly integrating-not bundling-wireline and wireless.”
And, he says, BeyondMobile offer its customers the chance to have the same services on their phones that they get in their offices without small-business owners having to worry about which services are supported or calling multiple vendors if something goes awry.
“We’re a one-stop shop for not only buying the service, but full support of the service,” Cobb said.
Cobb declined to specify which wireless network BeyondMobile is using for its service-but the only phone offered by the company, LG Electronics Co. Ltd. `s LX-225-is only offered for use on Sprint Nextel Corp.’s CDMA network.
Iain Gillott of iGillottResearch noted that offering only one handset limits Cbeyond, as does the fact that it only can offer its integrated services in six markets. In some ways, Gillott added, Cbeyond is doing the sort of multiple-play service that the larger carriers are interested in by offering data services, VoIP local and long-distance, and adding wireless to the bunch. “What they’re offering is actually pretty attractive if you live in one of their cities,” Gillott said. “The fact that you can share minutes is pretty slick. … I’ll be curious to see how they do.”
Cbeyond’s Cobb said the company soon plans to announce a smart phone, and eventually have four phones-two smart phones and two phones used primarily for voice-in circulation. It plans to charge $20 per month for unlimited data usage per phone and $10 per phone for unlimited text messaging.
“We don’t know of anyone else who is doing this, and we’re really excited about it,” Cobb said.
