Integra5 Brings Personalized TV-based Call Management to Foothills and Beyond

Integra5 Communications revealed this week Kentucky-based service provider Foothills Telephone Cooperative is its fourth publicly-named customer of its converged services platform.

Integra5 sells a platform -- and related applications -- for the creation and delivery of voice, video, data and cellular services.

Foothills will deploy Integra5’s TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting applications over its FTTH network beginning in January of 2006. The telco expects the applications to offer it competitive differentiation, increased customer loyalty and another lure to get customers to adopt its digital services.

Integra5 can offer these applications and others in networks regardless of what set-top boxes, switches and media servers are in place, says Meredith Flynn-Ripley, executive vice president of marketing and sales with Integra5. And it can present the services either on the PC, the TV or both.

In addition to TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting, Integra5 offers TV- and PC-based call logs, voicemail logs and the ability to personalize all of the above by adding nicknames, clip art (Integra5 offers an image library as part of the application) or imported photos for individual callers, for example, says Flynn-Ripley. She says that’s the kind of stuff that gets subscribers excited and invested in the service.

In addition to Foothills, telcos Comporium, Everest and Hargray are using Integra5 to offer value-added features to their bundles of services, allowing them to slightly increase the pricing of their packages and/or to create “stickiness” with customers.

Next year look for Integra5 to add “TV tones” and “PC tones” to its offering. These will be customizable ring tones, but played on TV and PC equipment in the home.

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