Bluegrass Cellular first up to the mic

The Kentucky carrier is the first to roll out karaoke-themed ringtones.

People willing to use a snippet of themselves performing karaoke as a ringback tone are people who take their cellular phone personally. That's what Bluegrass Cellular is counting on by becoming the first wireless operator in the nation to roll out Karaoke Tones, a feature enabled through Interop Technologies.

Bluegrass Cellular plans to offer Karaoke Tones this month as part of its BlueWorks Wireless Network, which covers 38 counties in central Kentucky. Interop provides the technology that supports this service as well as other ringtone, ringback tone and messaging services. It can be deployed as a hosted solution by Interop or installed on the operator's premises. Chocolate lovers may already be familiar with the service; the Hershey Co. used it in a promotional campaign.

Customers brave enough for Karaoke Tones can use their own handsets or a landline connection to create personalized ringtones by following a simple Web-based recording process with lyrics, voice prompts and music.

“This service allows the carrier's customer base to personalize their handsets to the nth degree,” said Damian Sazama, vice president of marketing and product development for Interop. “There's no other application that allows consumers to make and share their own ringtones. Sharing tones is a big part of this platform.”

It also is part of the business model. Deploying a hosted version of the technology allows Bluegrass to save on capital costs, while also generating minutes on its network. And it shares in the incremental revenue with Interop from the purchase of individual Karaoke Tones.

The saved personalized recordings can be delivered to customers' mobile phones, sent to other handsets, or shared through online communities and e-mail. The service includes an extensive, licensed content library with full digital rights management and a custom-branded Web interface.

There's also some quality control built in — for everything but the person's sense of pitch and rhythm. “The first thing the [system] does is a timing check. It asks you to count along with the integrated voice response system because of potential latency and syncs the voice with the track,” Sazama said. “With a new enhancement we put in the platform that even increases voice quality, we think it is as good as any other [Trutone] service.”

Barry Nothstine, who is partial to Rolling Stones' guitar licks and is director of marketing and product development at Bluegrass Cellular, said Interop is one of its most valued technology partners. “We work with them on a lot of different things, and they have been excellent to work with,” he said. “They provide a way for our customers to put their own personalized stamp on their cellular services. And we expect it will help increase differentiation and brand loyalty and create a new source of revenue.”

This is not the first time Bluegrass has been first out of the box with new technology. It was first to offer digital wireless service in central Kentucky in 1998 as part of a five-company group that formed the business seven years earlier. The other five companies are Brandenburg Telephone Co., Duo County Telephone Co., Logan Telephone Co., North Central Rural Telephone Co. and South Central Rural Telephone Co.

“We compete against some pretty big guys, so we're partnering with Interop to get the innovation that gives us ways to compete,” Nothstine said. “It is exciting for us to put a service out there that will make the phone stick in someone's hand.”