Altafiber

On March 2, 2022, shortly after its acquisition by Macquarie, the company announced it would begin doing business as "Altafiber". The company's legal name, Cincinnati Bell Inc., was not immediately affected.

Relationship to the Bell System

Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone (SNET) were the only two companies in the old Bell System in which AT&T Corporation only owned minority stakes. Therefore, neither was considered a Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) for regulatory purposes, restrictions placed on the Baby Bells did not apply to these two companies, and AT&T was not obligated to dispose of their ownership stakes in the companies. AT&T owned 32.6% of Cincinnati Bell until 1984, at which point the shares AT&T owned were placed into a trust and then sold.

Cincinnati Bell was, from 2006 to 2022, the only former Bell System company that continued to publicly do business under the "Bell" name. In July 2006, Cincinnati Bell removed the final iteration of the Bell logo—designed in 1969 by Saul Bass—from most of its corporate branding, leaving only a stylized wordmark. However, the company continued to use the Bell logo in promotional materials for residential landline and long-distance service until it adopted a new logo in 2016.

Beyond its ILEC territory, Cincinnati Bell Telephone additionally serves Mason, Lebanon, and the Dayton metropolitan area through its subsidiary Cincinnati Bell Extended Territories. Hawaiian Telcom, which Cincinnati Bell acquired in 2018, is the ILEC for the entire state of Hawaii.

OnX provides enterprise IT solutions in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.

Services

Cincinnati Bell has historically focused on traditional landline service, but in recent decades it has expanded into adjacent communications and entertainment services. As of 2017, legacy voice service makes up only a quarter of the company's revenue.

Landline service

Cincinnati Bell provides landline PSTN local and long-distance calling. Subscriptions to these traditional services have declined steadily over the past decade due to competition from cable and wireless providers. By 2017, legacy voice service accounted for only a quarter of the company's revenue. Between 2014 and 2015, overall voice lines fell approximately 4% year-over-year, a trend the company projected would continue at a similar rate.

Internet access

Cincinnati Bell offers Internet access to customers in its service area. Its primary competitor for broadband Internet access is Charter Spectrum Internet.

Fiber optics

In late 2009, Cincinnati Bell started offering a fiber-optic communications (Internet, telephone, and IPTV) service called Fioptics, similar to the U-verse service offered by AT&T and the FiOS service offered by Verizon Communications. Cincinnati Bell's Fioptics provides Internet at speeds from 5 Mbit/s up to 2 Gbit/s to over 500,000 homes in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. The availability is limited to areas wired for Fioptics, and other Fioptics services are not required. In areas now covered by Fioptics, Cincinnati Bell no longer offers ADSL-only speeds greater than 5 Mbit/s.

As of 2019, Cincinnati Bell's fiber optic network extends nearly 16,500 route miles (26,600 km).

Electricity

In 2011, Cincinnati Bell became the first telecommunications company to also provide retail energy service. Through a partnership with Viridian Energy, Cincinnati Bell Energy competes with several other alternative electricity retailers for the power generation portion of customers' electricity bills. The subsidiary advertises that its service is entirely sourced from National Wind.

Former services

Wireless telephony

From 1998 until 2015, Cincinnati Bell Wireless (CBW) offered GSM wireless service in southeastern Indiana, southwestern Ohio, and northern Kentucky. It was sold at Best Buy, Circuit City (until 2009), Office Depot, and participating Kroger locations. It offered HSPA+ service in most of Hamilton County, Ohio, and parts of surrounding counties; EDGE service in Dayton and Oxford; and GSM service elsewhere. The local coverage area extended north to Celina and Urbana, east to Hillsboro, south to Corinth and Warsaw, and west to Batesville. Cincinnati Bell's prepaid mobile phone products were sold under the same i-wireless brand as an unrelated service by locally based Kroger.

Cincinnati Bell made its first foray into wireless telephony around 1986, when it acquired a 45% stake in Ameritech Cellular. On February 2, 1998, Cincinnati Bell acquired 80% of AT&T Wireless Services's new Cincinnati-Dayton PCS network for over $100 million. Cincinnati Bell's subsidiary Cincinnati Bell Wireless was responsible for marketing and sales, while AT&T Wireless handled technical operations for the joint venture. Wireless service began by June in Cincinnati and by September in Dayton, eventually covering a 21-county area. When AT&T Wireless was purchased by Cingular, now known as AT&T Mobility, control of its 20% stake also passed to Cingular. On February 17, 2006, Cincinnati Bell took full control of CBW by purchasing Cingular's stake for $83 million. As a part of the deal, Cincinnati Bell and Cingular secured lower roaming charges on each other's respective GSM networks.

On April 7, 2014, Cincinnati Bell announced plans to sell its wireless spectrum and other assets to Verizon Wireless, as part of a planned emphasis on enterprise and entertainment services such as Fioptics. Cincinnati Bell Wireless ended service on February 28, 2015, and the company's retail locations began selling Verizon products.

Directories

Like other Bell System–affiliated companies, Cincinnati Bell published a series of local telephone directories, beginning in 1879. In 2002, it spun off these operations as CBD Media.

Retail presence

Cincinnati Bell originally operated a chain of Cincinnati Bell Phone Center locations until 1992, when it sold the retail chain to AT&T. It reentered the retail space in 1998 with three Store@Cincinnati Bell retail locations. As of 2018, the company operates nine Cincinnati Bell Stores.