Insights

CSF Acquires Aerialink to Enhance Capabilities in Text Communications

Mar 28, 2017

CSF is a leader in the Toll-Free number provisioning and least-cost routing (LCR) with more than 100 carrier and Responsible Organization (Resp Org) customers today. Aerialink is a leader in text messaging, among a comprehensive range of wireless communications services. We spoke to Rich Scanlon (President and CEO of CSF Corporation) and Chris Currie (President of Aerialink) on what drove the acquisition and what to expect next.

What’s the story behind the acquisition? 

RICH: 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 comprehensive texting solution.

CHRIS: 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 capabilities to help our customers succeed in the growing enterprise-wide communications market.

How different is Toll-Free texting from other communications options?

CHRIS: From a carrier’s perspective, there are two types of message routes in the industry: P2P (person-to-person) and A2P (application-to-person) message routes. Toll-Free numbers are currently the only 10-digit numbers that support A2P message routes. That’s an advantage we have right now for use cases that would typically only work on common short codes.

RICH: 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 Resp Org customers and their end customers.

What value does Toll-Free texting offer an enterprise?

CHRIS: 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 communication method. It usually is less time-consuming to send a text message compared to a phone call or e-mail. On the operational side, Toll-Free texting allows businesses to engage with their customers in a much more streamlined and efficient fashion bridging the brand awareness with both voice and messaging capabilities all under one “number.” Texting maintains message history and threaded conversations for later review and analysis.

How will Toll-Free texting benefit Resp Orgs?

RICH:  Resp Orgs 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 provisioning capabilities with the text communications capabilities of Aerialink. And we’ll explore every opportunity to enhance and extend our SaaS product suite to make Toll-Free provisioning, texting, and complex routing more valuable to our customers. 

To learn more about csf Corporation, visit their website or call 855.CALLCSF

To learn more about Aerialink, visit their website or call 800.449.9477.