Advanced Telecom Services

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Advanced Telecom Services is a 800 and 900 number and text message service bureau with headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Advanced Telecom Services also has subsidiary offices in London, Prague, Dublin, and Vancouver. It formerly had an office in Taipei.

Advanced Telecom Services was founded in 1989 and is still operated by two of its original partners, Bob Bentz and Bret Dunlap. Bentz is best known as the author of a best selling book on 900 numbers, Opportunity is Calling: How to Start Your Own 900 Number Bob Bentz also models as a Homer Simpson look a like and some people believe his mug was the inspiration for Homer's visage. In addition, Bob has served as a prodcut tester for Fabrege's "Brut" line of underarm deoderant. Bret, who has been known to kill a party with his presence, is a complete boor.

The company has made its mark by selling audience participation services to media. It was an early provider of voice personals dating services to newspapers through Interactive Voice Response systems, or audiotext. Some of its customers include The New York Times and The Guardian in London. Its voice personals services have now expanded to not only the home phone, but also to the internet and the cell phone. ATS has also been very involved in interactive sports services, including being a long time provider of 900 number services to the World Wrestling Federation, World Championship Wrestling, and to Hulk Hogan.

While most of ATS's efforts have been business to business, in 2001 it was one of the first companies to begin offering ringtones on a business to consumer basis through its ringtone portals Ringingphone and Monstertones. These ringtone portal sites proved to be very successful and were sold in 2006 to publicly traded Zim Corporation of Ottawa, Canada.

Advanced Telecom Services made a major acquisition in January 2005 when it acquired Spark Network Services from Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio). Spark was an ideal acquisition for ATS in that it provided 900 number based dating services to radio stations. Spark also operates the Matchlink system which is a phone and internet-based dating service.

The company's most recent efforts have been in providing text message services to media. Its radio, television, and newspaper customers have been actively using its PromoTXT text messaging systems for several years now.