Advanced Telecom Services Celebrates 20 Years

Wayne, Pennsylvania -- Advanced Telecom Services celebrates its 20th anniversary today, July 15, 2009.

To put that into perspective, it is important to note how many companies actually last that long. According to a University of Texas study, 50% of companies close within four years. Seventy percent close within 8 years and 98% close within 11 years. Hence, Advanced Telecom Services 20 year anniversary is certainly something to acknowledge.

1989’s Top News Stories

To put twenty years into perspective, its important to note what happened when Advanced Telecom Services was an created. In 1989, country star Taylor Swift was born. Seinfeld debuted on television and Rain Main won the Academy Award as Best Picture. Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy won the Grammy as Song of the Year.

Internationally, 1989 was the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union and Vaclav Havel was elected president of the Czech Republic. George H.W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan as president of the United States.

In 1989, the Soviets pulled its troops out of Afghanistan. It was the year of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the year Pete Rose was given a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling, and the year of a major San Francisco earthquake that delayed the World Series between Bay Area participants San Francisco and Oakland.

ATS: Twenty Years of Development

“Twenty years is longer than most marriages,” said Bob Bentz, president of Advanced Telecom Services. “We are very fortunate to be in business that long. It is the dedication of our employees over the years that has enabled us to operate this long.”

“My impression is that one of the major issues facing most organizations at the end of the century is sustainability,” said Dr. Uri Merry, who has written several books on the lifespan of companies. “Sustainability can be understood as adaptiveness over time. Sustainability can also be seen as the ability of an organization to constantly renew itself after every life cycle.”

Certainly, sustainability and renewal has been a key to the long term success of Advanced Telecom Services. The company was organized in 1989 to take advantage of the new 900 number service being offered by AT&T MultiQuest. Information by telephone was flourishing at the time and Advanced Telecom Services contributed to that trend.

ATS Embraces the Web

But, a major way in which we communicated was lurking around the corner -- the internet.

“Part of our success has been the way we embraced the internet,” said Bentz. “Rather than fight it, we joined it. Today, our legacy business remains IVR (interactive voice response), but our biggest growth categories are via delivering information and content on the web and mobile phone.”

Throughout the years, Advanced Telecom Services has continued to serve its media and advertising agency customers with its interactive telemedia products. While the medium of delivering the products has changed, the content and the target market has not been altered.

ATS On the Move Internationally

Much of Advanced Telecom Services’ success can be attributed to international expansion as well. In 1992, ATS opened ATS-London, its first international office in London, England to take advantage of magazine industry circulation which sold publications on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1993, it expanded to Canada when the Canadian 900 number industry was born.

In 1997, ATS expanded to the Czech Republic with the opening of its ATS-Praha office in Prague. Just a few years later, Advanced Telecom Services was noted as the fourth largest advertiser in the Czech Republic. And, in 1998, Advanced Telecom Services expanded to Taipei, Taiwan where it opened an audio text service bureau with the introduction of premium rate services in Taiwan.

Product Offerings from ATS

Product offerings have certainly also changed over the years. While Advanced Telecom Services concentrated mostly on 900 number and 800 number products in its early years, it developed one of the first online dating sites in the mid-1990’s. This technology helped evolve ATS into a major provider of online dating solutions to radio stations and newspapers through its MatchLink and WebFriends brands.

In 2002, Advanced Telecom Services developed its highly successful Ringingphone and MonsterTones ringtone portals. These sites grew into being a top 1000 ranked sites in the world, according to Alexa rankings.

In 2005, Advanced Telecom Services purchased Spark Network Services, Inc. the leading provider of non-traditional revenue to radio stations in the United States, from Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio).

In 2006, ATS started a new subsidiary business, Advanced Mobile Solutions, to develop mobile solutions for major newspapers and internet portals.

Most recently, in 2009, Advanced Telecom Services opened its version 2.0 software for its mobile marketing product on 84444.com. This do-it-yourself mobile marketing solution has made it easy for radio stations, advertisers, and advertising agencies to launch interactive and broadcast mobile marketing products from the convenience of their desktop computer.

Advanced Telecom Services Looks to the Future

There is no doubt that the future of Advanced Telecom Services lies in its ability to marry the internet with the mobile phone. The internet revolutionized the way we obtain information and the cell phone is embarking on the same course.

It’s hard to imagine what telemedia and content distribution over the telephone will be like twenty years from now.

“I am still amazed that it has been twenty years,” said Bret Dunlap, Director of Advanced Telecom Services. “Over this time period, ATS has stepped past its comfort zone in order to pursue opportunities that were related, but not always directly related to our core business of Interactive Voice Response. For these reasons, we are still in business today while most of our competitors have disappeared.”

Dunlap insists that the future looks bright for Advanced Telecom Services and the next twenty years look even more exciting than the first twenty years. “Going forward, we have no shortage of ideas,” said Dunlap. “We are just going to be very judicious as to how to allocate resources in building the business for the next twenty years.”

This press release is dedicated to the many fine employees of Advanced Telecom Services over the past twenty years. It is especially dedicated to Eric from the USA office and Eva from the Czech Republic office who left us far sooner than they should have. Eric and Eva, you are greatly missed.

Contact an ATS representative today by email.