Lightbridge Announces PhoneFuel Open At CTIA; New Service Offers Customer Self-Care For Both Prepaid and Postpaid Subscribers.

Business/Technology Editors

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2001

Lightbridge, Inc. (Nasdaq:LTBG), a global provider of mobile business solutions to wireless carriers, today announced PhoneFuel Open(TM), a value-added service that enables carriers to provide their postpaid and prepaid subscribers with quick and easy access to account information and self-service customer care. PhoneFuel Open provides Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) mobile and Web browser access to accurate, up-to-the-minute account details, including account balance, and call and payment records. PhoneFuel Open also gives subscribers the ability to make payments to their account whenever they choose, using major credit cards or electronic funds transfer (EFT). In addition, PhoneFuel Open helps carriers reduce customer care costs and build stronger customer relationships while ultimately empowering the subscriber to take control of their wireless account. Lightbridge will be featuring PhoneFuel Open at booth #4051 at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas, NV, from March 20-22.

PhoneFuel Open is built upon the PhoneFuel(TM) service developed by Corsair Communications, a Lightbridge company. PhoneFuel Open leverages Lightbridge's inventory of more than 80 third-party carrier system interfaces through the Telesto(TM) Portal, so carriers can offer this service to their postpaid and prepaid subscribers. PhoneFuel Open supports: account balance inquiry, payment processing and posting, replenishment, call detail and virtually any customer acquisition and care function that can be made available from a carrier's billing and customer care systems.

"By providing subscribers with convenient access to up-to-the-minute account information, carriers can reduce their customer acquisition and care costs, while increasing brand loyalty for both their prepaid and postpaid customers," said Carla Schneiderman, vice president of marketing at Lightbridge. "In addition, by getting subscribers accustomed to using their mobile phones to conduct transactions, PhoneFuel Open provides a foundation for a carrier's future mobile business strategies."

PhoneFuel Open includes key personalization features to enable users to set up "One-Touch" access to the most-used features. Subscribers can store account information on PhoneFuel Open's secure server for easy payment, and even set up automatic payments on an ongoing basis from their credit card or bank account. This convenient "customer self-care" feature reduces carriers' billing and payment processing costs, collections costs, as well as revenue leakage associated with the manual processing of payments.

PhoneFuel Open Leverages Lightbridge's Telesto

Through its integration with Lightbridge's Telesto, PhoneFuel Open's capabilities can be extended to incorporate customer acquisition, retention and risk management solutions. The solution helps carriers reduce subscriber fraud by providing integrated, real-time access to the full suite of fraud management applications that screen each transaction for identity fraud, credit card/payment fraud, and for determining a subscriber's ability to pay based on recent and historical credit worthiness. PhoneFuel Open also supports complex business logic and workflow rules, through Telesto workflow servers, ensuring that the proper data is passed to each business system at the proper time, and that the exceptions are captured and handled by the correct business entities. These entities may include carrier activation and revenue assurance departments, or an escalation to one of the Lightbridge call centers.

"To speed adoption, Lightbridge Consulting Services helps integrate the wireless internet customer self care capabilities of PhoneFuel Open into a carrier's billing and customer care infrastructure," said Bob Shelton, director of strategic solutions at Lightbridge. "We will work with both the carrier and the billing and customer care system providers to make the desired transactions accessible to PhoneFuel Open and Telesto in the secure, reliable, scalable fashion we guarantee for all our clients."

Availability

PhoneFuel Open is available immediately to carriers in the United States and internationally. Currency and languages are fully customizable in PhoneFuel Open, enabling international carriers to easily localize content according to the custom of different countries. In addition, the Web "look and feel" can be customized to offer subscribers a seamless experience by accessing the solution from the carrier's existing Web site. PhoneFuel Open can be deployed at the carrier's location, with back-end integration to Telesto, or on a fully outsourced application service provider (ASP) basis.

About Lightbridge

Lightbridge is a global provider of mobile business solutions, offering wireless carriers a flexible, comprehensive suite of products and services designed to increase revenue, productivity and customer loyalty. Building on its 12 year heritage in the wireless telecommunications arena, Lightbridge offers a reliable infrastructure for the mobile business economy that supports a complete customer lifecycle, including customer acquisition, risk management, prepay and replenishment, customer relationship management and retention. On February 7, 2001, Lightbridge completed its acquisition of Corsair Communications, Inc., a provider of real-time, prepaid billing solutions for the global wireless industry. While continuing to set standards for pervasive customer care, Lightbridge now enables carriers to increase the volume of new subscribers by offering either prepay or post pay billing administration models. For more information visit http://www.lightbridge.com or call 800-LIGHTBR.

Lightbridge and the Lightbridge logo are registered trademarks of Lightbridge, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.