Illuminet buys subsidiary

CHRIS CLOUGH, THE OLYMPIAN

LACEY -- Illuminet Holdings Inc. is extending its telecommunication reach with an acquisition announced Tuesday.

The Lacey-based corporation has agreed to purchase BellSouth International's roaming and clearinghouse subsidiary -- BellSouth International Wireless Services -- for $25 million in cash.

BSI-WS is a domestic wireless clearinghouse provider -- moving and tracking call records among carriers for billing purposes -- and also provides such services for wireless carriers in Latin America.

"It's our first large-scale penetration into an international marketplace," Illuminet spokeswoman Penny Thomas said Tuesday.

Illuminet helps telecommunication carriers, both wireless and traditional, route calls with its computerized signaling system and connects carriers to databanks necessary for toll-free calls, caller ID and other such services.

Illuminet doesn't deal directly with the end user, but instead helps companies such as the Baby Bell spin-offs and independent carriers complete calls nationwide and offer more services to callers.

Illuminet also has offices in Kansas and now employs about 200 people in Lacey.

Illuminet was founded in 1981 and became a publicly traded company in 1999.

Its initial public offering raised $78 million.

As of June 30, the company had cash or cash equivalents of $123 million, said Dan Weiss, Illuminet's chief financial officer.

That cash helped clear the way for the deal announced Tuesday.

Domestically, BSI-WS is a wireless clearinghouse provider for carriers such as Cingular Wireless.

The acquisition of BSI-WS includes migration of that traffic to Illuminet's wireless clearinghouse service by December.

BSI-WS offers wireless operators seamless roaming throughout the Americas, by connecting wireless telep-hone carriers in South and Central America to one another and to carriers in North America.

That roaming network connects wireless carriers in 23 countries in South, Central and North America, as well as the Caribbean.

Roger Moore, who is the CEO of Illuminet Holdings, said the acquisition compliments the corporation's other services.

"It also creates new opportunities for growth in areas such as transport and clearing of short text messaging," Moore said.

"In addition, this acquisition expands the market potential for our prepaid service offering from National Telemanagement Corp., the second largest provider of prepaid services in the U.S., which we acquired last year.

"By coupling BSI-WS with Illuminet, we can make these services available to the rest of the telecommunications industry in Latin America and bolster our position of being a single source provider of a full range of services -- roaming, fraud management and clearing -- in that new marketplace," Moore said.

On the Web

Illuminet (www.illuminet.com)

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