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THE

INCOMPAS SHOW

I

APRIL 3 - 5, 2017

www.bekabusinessmedia.com

DAY

2

Thermo Credit Provides $2

Million Loan to Civil Solutions

CSF Focuses on Toll-Free Texting with

Aerialink Acquisition

C

SF (Booth 308), a provider of

toll-free number provisioning

and least-cost routing (LCR),

has more than 100 carrier and

RespOrg customers today. It recently

acquired Aerialink, a provider of

text messaging and other wireless

communications services.

We spoke to Rich Scanlon, presi-

dent and CEO of CSF, and Chris

Currie, president of Aerialink, on

what drove the acquisition and what

to expect next.

Q: What’s the story behind the

acquisition?

Scanlon:

We believe the toll-free

texting market is ripe for some

explosive growth. We also see

continued growth of the toll-free

number market. With the new 833

code release in April of this year,

there will soon be almost 50 million

numbers in circulation. And we see

a consistent uptake in businesses

interacting with customers over text

messaging. So, to take full advantage

of these market trends, we decided

several months ago to look for a

superior text messaging solution and

began to evaluate Aerialink’s compre-

hensive texting solution.

Currie:

Aerialink’s mobile

messaging platform is robust,

flexible, easy-to-use and supports

a range of SMS, MMS and location

services via APIs and applications.

This acquisition provides both our

companies with enhanced capabili-

ties to help our customers succeed

in the growing enterprisewide

communications market.

Q: How different is toll-free texting

from other communications options?

Currie:

From a carrier’s

perspective, there are two types

of traffic in the industry: P2P

(person-to-person) traffic and A2P

(application-to-person) traffic. Toll-

free numbers are currently the only

10-digit numbers that support A2P

T

hermo Credit has provided a $2 million asset-based loan

to Civil Solutions Inc (CSI).

CSI, a San Diego-based company that provides turnkey

cellular, microwave and broadband network solutions, will use the

facility for working capital and to fund corporate growth.

“I was very impressed with Seth and his team at Thermo

Credit,” said Thomas Zorich, CSI CFO. “They quickly grasped

the nuances of our business and took a big-picture view of our

industry and company, and could see the potential in both. We

are very happy to be working with them.”

Seth Block, executive vice president of Thermo Credit, added,

“We are very excited to be working with Duane, Russ, Tom and

the rest of the team at Civil Solutions. This company is poised

to have tremendous growth over the next few years and we are

pleased to be a part of it.”

p

traffic. That’s an advantage we

have right now.

Scanlon:

Toll-free texting

combines the trust consumers

have in toll-free numbers

with the convenience of text

messaging. If you think about

the text-enablement of landline

toll-free numbers, of course, the

industry experts are aware of

this capability, but if you talk to

the everyday small business, it’s

very likely that they don’t know

that this capability exists. So, it’s

important that we, Somos and

CSF, continue to educate our

RespOrg customers and their

end customers.

Q: What value does toll-free

texting offer an enterprise?

Scanlon:

There are so many

benefits, so let me just mention

some of the main ones. It’s a

simple fact today that people

increasingly prefer texting to

any other two-way commu-

nication method. It usually is

less time-consuming to send

a text message compared

to a phone call or email. On

the operational side, toll-free

texting allows businesses to

engage with their customers in

a much more streamlined and

efficient fashion. It also allows

them to conveniently engage in

multiple conversation sessions

at the same time. And, texting

maintains message history and

threaded conversations for later

review and analysis.

Q: How will toll-free texting

benefit RespOrgs?

Scanlon:

RespOrgs are our

primary customer base. They

are the ones that provide toll-

free services to businesses. Our

goal is to help them position

toll-free in a way that will lead

to accelerated market growth.

We’re very excited about the

opportunity of combining our

comprehensive toll-free provi-

sioning capabilities with the text

communications capabilities of

Aerialink, and we’ll explore every

opportunity to enhance and

extend our software-as-a-service

(SaaS) product suite to make

toll-free provisioning, texting and

complex routing more valuable

to our customers.

p