Cincinnati Bell
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Template:Infobox Company$1.2096 Billion USD (2005)|
net_income = Template:Loss-$74.9 Million USD (2005)| homepage = www.cincinnatibell.com
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Cincinnati Bell is the dominant telephone company for Cincinnati, Ohio and its nearby suburbs in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. The parent company is named Cincinnati Bell Inc. The ILEC (original phone company) subsidiary uses the name Cincinnati Bell Telephone, and Cincinnati Bell Wireless provides mobile phone (cellular) services. Other subsidiaries handle services such as payphones and long distance (IXC operations).
Cincinnati Bell started out as the City and Suburban Telegraph Company and was providing telegraph lines between homes and businesses in 1873, three years before the invention of the telephone. In 1878, it gained exclusive rights to the Bell franchise within a 25 mile radius of Cincinnati; it has substantially the same ILEC territory today: small yet straddling a 3-state area.
Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone were the only two companies in the old Bell System that were owned independently of AT&T (AT&T held only minority interests in these two companies); therefore, neither is considered a Regional Bell operating company (RBOC). AT&T held 25.7% interest in Cincinnati Bell before 1984. SNET was bought by SBC, an RBOC, in 1998, but Cincinnati Bell has remained independent.
During the 1990s, Cincinnati Bell acquired a nationwide transmission network formerly known as IXC Communications, and changed its corporate name to "Broadwing Communications," although the local telephone operations continued to operate under their traditional name. In the 2000s, the holding company divested the long-distance operation and changed its name back to Cincinnati Bell. Cincinnati Bell is one of the only two companies that continues to use the Bell logo in their corporate logo, designed in 1969, by Saul Bass. However, after AT&T completes its purchase of BellSouth, Cincinnati Bell will become the last remaining company to use the Bell logo. Cincinnati Bell's stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the stock symbol CBB.
Cincinnati Bell provides wireless service through Cincinnati Bell Wireless, which it now fully owns. Cingular Wireless owned 20% of the company after it took over AT&T Wireless in 2004. Cincinnati Bell purchased the 20% Cingular owned on February 17, 2006, for $80 million. [1]
Cincinnati Bell's Internet offerings include dial-up and ADSL access under the Fuse and ZoomTown brands, respectively.