THE EXPERT’S OPINION

Pendray: CBIS is an operating subsidiary of the Cincinnati Bell Group, which is a result of the break-up of AT&T. CBIS grew through acquisition and is now in excess of 400 million dollars a year of business. CBIS’s main business is the processing, on an outsourcing basis, of bills for cellular telephone subscribers. They produce almost 50% of these bills in the USA and they are moving into the PCS market. They also do all of the processing for Cincinnati Bell which includes local service and long distance billing. In the international part of CBIS, they also develop network management software for telephone companies. CBIS is not in that line of business within the U.S. due to the dominance of Bellcore, but overseas this is an attractive market. In the US, CBIS has major operations in Cincinnati, Orlando, and Chicago. CBIS also has two operating units in the UK, one in Bern, Switzerland, based around a project with the Swiss PTT, and another in Utrecht in the Netherlands where they are working with the Dutch PTT on a network management project. CBIS had operations in Melbourne, Australia tied to a large project there which was successfully completed. So basically it’s the classical multi-step approach for an American company going first to Europe, well, first to the UK, then to the rest of Europe, then to Australia, and then to the rest of the world.