Best Buy selected Intec in 2009 to support its MVNO plans and help the retailer deliver innovative new services to the consumer technology market. Best Buy Connect is an example of one of these offerings, which allows consumers to one-stop-shop for connected solutions by purchasing computers with customizable mobile broadband service plan options.

The virtually unlimited service types supported by the Singl.eView platform will allow Best Buy to offer an expanded array of services, from data plans to innovative content and technology support services. Postpaid, prepaid, and “pay now” are all supported from a truly convergent service billing engine. More importantly, Singl.eView’s inherent flexibility will allow Best Buy to react quickly to changes in what has become the most competitive of landscapes.

“We’re building on the great Best Buy brand and foundation to enable people to rely on us for one-stop shopping and support for their mobile computing experience, and our customer support continues well after purchase,” said Jed Stillman, vice president of Best Buy Connect. “For our customers, the Intec solution means that Best Buy can deliver the flexibility and reliability that we require to effectively serve customers in this space.”

“It is truly an honor to work with an iconic company like Best Buy to bring innovative offerings to consumers. With its support for real-time rating, balance management and thresholds, the Intec solution delivers the flexibility and control needed to manage modern service offers, and provides Best Buy with a solid foundation on which to build a multitude of service offers with confidence,” said Ian Watterson, Vice President Americas, Intec.

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A technology industry veteran with over 25 years experience, Kallol joins Intec from HP India where his last assignment was as Director of Application Services, in HP’s Enterprise Services Business (formerly EDS). Kallol and his team were responsible for multi-sector solution implementations from communications, media and entertainment to utilities, manufacturing and financial services, conceptualising, creating and delivering solutions using HP and partner IPs to solve customers’ business problems.

“I am very excited to have the opportunity to drive Intec’s market-leading BSS solutions as the market takes unprecedented steps forward,” commented Kallol. “Alongside a highly skilled team, of great integrity, Intec is in a very strong position to capitalise on the exciting market growth opportunities and I look forward to playing a key role in the company’s global development.”

“Kallol joins Intec with exceptional industry experience, which will prove a significant asset to Intec, customers and partners alike,” said Reece Donovan, President of Global Services for Intec. “Intec is well known and trusted both in the region, and globally, and our powerful and sophisticated BSS solutions are more relevant than ever before, for incumbents and new market entrants, looking to leverage new communication technologies and embrace new service offerings for profitable growth.”

Kallol undertook a number of roles in the combined entity of Compaq, HP and EDS for the last 14 years including technical support, sales, solution marketing and business development. He has also held positions with Tata IBM, Pertech Computers Ltd and PSI Data Systems India. Kallol has a Bachelors Degree in Technology and a Management Diploma and lives in Bangalore, with his wife and two sons.

Intec supplies solutions to over 60 of the world’s top 100 telecoms operators, with a vision to become the world’s most trusted supplier of BSS (Business Support Systems) solutions.

Intec’s many customers include AT&T, Aircel, Antel, Bharti, Cable & Wireless, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Eircom (Ireland), France Telecom, Hutchison 3G, O2, Orange, Reliance, Talk Talk, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Vivo and Verizon.

Intec works closely with its customers, many of whom have been with Intec since its inception, to provide the highest standards of performance, flexibility and robustness to help operators service their customers effectively and profitably.

Founded in 1997, Intec is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ITL.L) and has over 1,600 staff and a presence in 24 countries. For more information, visit the Intec website at www.intecbilling.com

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The Broadband World Forum 2010 (26-28 October at CNIT, La Defense in Paris, France) will this year feature more than 200 leading industry speakers, including 125 global service providers, from around the world addressing over 6,000 attendees across four new tracks covering transport, intelligence, access and services.

The start of each day will see a series of keynote sessions run by global executives from operator and vendor companies worldwide covering the latest innovations in the broadband industry including Who pays? The new economic model for broadband, Broadband: Changing lives and Services in the cloud. This year’s keynote line-up includes:

• Oliver Baujard, Deutsche Telekom
• Dr. Choi Doo Whan, KT
• Virginia P. Ruesterholz, Verizon
• Thierry Bonhomme, Orange France Telecom Group
• Dr Shyue-Ching Lu, Chungwa Telecom
• George Nazi, BT
• Mike Quigley, National Broadband Network
• Lord Stephen Carter, Alcatel-Lucent
• Ashish Chowdhary, Nokia Siemens Networks
• Johan Bergendahl, Ericsson
• Matt Bross, Huawei
• Ms Chen Jie, ZTE Corporation
• Adolfo Hernandez, Alcatel-Lucent
• Stefan Dyckerhoff, Juniper Networks

Plus there will be an exclusive invitation-only Executive Leadership Summit and a half-day Broadband High Growth Markets seminar featuring contributors from across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Gavin Whitechurch, research director at Informa Telecoms & Media, commented: “This year’s enhanced event programme is set to make Broadband World Forum a truly global event. Our provisional agenda has already attracted high levels of interest from potential delegates and our exhibition is 80 per cent sold or reserved.

“Attendee figures are tracking well above previous years, and we hope that this exceptional level of early interest, along with the unrivalled speaker and exhibitor line up, will attract a record number of visitors to secure our place as the number one broadband show and establish us as the leading global telecommunications event.”

Broadband World Forum is this year celebrating its 10th anniversary and has long been established as the place to meet and discuss the commercial and technical opportunities, developments and issues surrounding broadband. The new conference structure for 2010 is in response to delegate feedback and now features analyst breakfast briefings, more keynote sessions, a choice of four conference tracks and a world-class exhibition including 280 companies. In addition the Broadband InfoVision Awards will now be presented during a full gala dinner cruise on the evening of day one.

To view the full event programme and register for the conference, visit the Broadband World Forum website at www.broadbandworldforum.com or call +44 (0)20 7017 5506.

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“Compared to the developed world, there are very different economic, social, demographic and cultural challenges in the emerging markets. In many countries, 3G services are still not available, or are limited to mobile subscribers in larger cities. Therefore operators have to depend on 2G services such as SMS, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, to be able to drive mass market adoption of their mobile value-added-services, and to successfully reach subscribers in smaller towns and rural areas,” according to Shailendra Pandey, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

Mobile operators and service providers in emerging markets have, in many respects, been more innovative and proactive in developing and deploying new mobile VAS than their counterparts in the developed world. In particular, operators are seeing strong uptake of utility type services including mobile payments, P2P funds transfer and agricultural information services. The reason being that these services are having a big impact on the day-to-day lives of the local population and are contributing to the social and economic development of the population in these markets. Services such as M-PESA from Safaricom in Kenya, the Rural Information Service from China Mobile, the “Please Call Me” service from MTN in South Africa, and the “CellBazaar” service from GrameenPhone in Bangladesh are some good examples.

Mobile social networking is beginning to see strong growth in emerging markets but most of the services are instant messaging chat applications. One of the most successful service examples is China Mobile’s IM service called Fetion, which has over 100 million registered users. The addressable market for the Fetion service is large as it can work using IVR, GPRS and SMS access modes.

Mobile app stores have so far not received the same attention from the operators in emerging markets as they have in the US and Western Europe but some large operators like China Mobile have already launched – or are considering launching – their own app stores. Earlier this year,China Mobile has collaborated with Nokia to launch a joint mobile app store “MM-Ovi” and it has been reported that over 4 million mobile apps had been downloaded from this app store by March 2010.

With high market saturation and limited growth prospects in developed countries, the emerging markets with a high growth potential are becoming a key focus for mobile industry players including operators, handset manufacturers and infrastructure vendors, as well as the VAS platform and technology vendors.

Informa’s research on the Mobile VAS market is available to its Intelligence Centre clients and from its on-line research store www.informatm.com/mobileservices

*Informa Telecoms & Media defines mobile VAS as all mobile services apart from voice calls.

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“The Intec solution brings us a reliable and flexible system for expanding our operations and easily addressing the challenges of the forthcoming number portability requirements. Intec offers a proven solution that enables us to bridge our interconnection operations with other areas of our business,” said Robinson Luengo, Entel Financial and Interconnection Manager. “Intec understands the challenges and requirements for business growth and maximising revenues from interconnect agreements as evidenced by similar implementations throughout Latin America.”

Entel PCS, which has more than a 38% market share in Chile with double digit subscriber growth, provides mobile communications service throughout Chile. The selection of Intec’s solution, which in addition to the InterconnecT settlement core, includes InterconnecT Prep for EDR pre-processing, Automated Reconciliation Manager and Financial Manager, will allow the wireless operator to compete more effectively against its competition.

“With the Intec InterconnecT suite Entel PCS is able to substantially reduce its manual processes, speed its reconciliation with partners for faster time to revenue, and easily configure new partner agreements for enhanced service offerings. Entel will also be able to view its interconnect business and value-added services in a holistic fashion through reporting, providing added visibility and control for enabling better business decisions,” said Ian Watterson, Intec VP Americas. “Entel PCS is a strong addition to Intec’s Chilean and regional customer base, and we look forward to helping them grow their business.”

Intec supplies solutions to over 60 of the world’s top 100 telecoms operators, with a vision to become the world’s most trusted supplier of BSS (Business Support Systems) solutions.

Intec’s many customers include AT&T, Aircel, Antel, Bharti, Cable & Wireless, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Eircom (Ireland), France Telecom, Hutchison 3G, O2, Orange, Reliance, Talk Talk, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Vivo and Verizon.

Intec works closely with its customers, many of whom have been with Intec since its inception, to provide the highest standards of performance, flexibility and robustness to help operators service their customers effectively and profitably.

Founded in 1997, Intec is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ITL.L) and has over 1,600 staff and a presence in 24 countries. For more information, visit the Intec website at www.intecbilling.com.

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The main driver behind convergent charging techniques is actually the need to create a more constant client encounter, such as versatile payment versions such as postpaid tone of voice providers combined with prepaid information providers, and leveraging potential cross-sell or bundling opportunities throughout services.

Generally, legacy charging systems at telecom providers happen to be disparate, that makes it hard to release bundled providers. Real-time, convergent charging solutions enable providers to accomplish much better network utilisation, reduce working expenditures, as well as boost customer purchase and retention.

“Implementing convergent charging abilities provides the agent having the ability to deliver providers as well as recognise revenue on the real-time schedule while gaining flexibility around service functions, support bundles as well as pricing,” mentioned Shira Levine, pointing analyst, Next Gen OSS as well as Policy, from Infonetics Research. “Comverse offers built a single convergent program around the unified information model which leverages it’s origins within the prepaid company, along with postpaid functionality from the purchase of the former Kenan’s charging assets.”

A market very first, the Comverse One Billing as well as Energetic Customer Management solution unifies product sales, advertising, purchasing, charging and customer administration around a single information design to supply complete convergence throughout any system, any support, any content material as well as any payment kind. Through centralising client info, eliminating integration points, and providing just one marketing-driven product catalogue, Comverse One enables operators in order to rapidly introduce as well as monetise new providers, while providing a frequent as well as fun customer experience regardless of client touchpoint. It becomes a company support system into a strategic property allowing operators in order to profit from market possibilities faster than ever before.

“The Infonetics Research statement underscores the requirement for real-time convergent charging techniques which support several as well as flexible payment models,” said Gabriel Matsliach, president associated with items as well as operations from Comverse, the world’s leading dealer associated with software program and techniques allowing value-added messaging and content services, converged billing as well as active client management, as well as Internet protocol marketing communications.

“Comverse 1 was built to aid all sorts of convergence scenarios, helping providers to ensure a frequent customer experience, launch bundled providers and reduce the complexness of their charging environment,” Matsliach mentioned. “Our leading market share within convergent charging reflects the actual unique abilities of our BSS solution, along with the company’s unparalleled experience in just about all proportions of convergence.”

Comverse is the globe’s leading supplier of software program as well as techniques enabling value-added providers for tone of voice, messaging, mobile web and mobile advertising; converged charging and active client management; as well as Internet protocol communications. Comverse’s considerable client base covers more than 125 nations and handles over 450 connection service providers offering a lot more than two million subscribers. The organization’s revolutionary product portfolio allows communication providers to unleash the value of the system for his or her customers by making their own systems wiser. Comverse’s solutions assistance flexible deployment versions, including in-network, hosted and managed services, and can run on circuit-switched, Internet protocol, IMS or even converged system conditions. Comverse is really a subsidiary associated with Comverse Technologies, Inc. (CMVT.PK). To learn more, visit www.comverse.com .

All item as well as organization titles mentioned thus might be authorized trademarks or even trademarks of Comverse or even the respective referenced organization(s).

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Numbering resources are a key asset to telecoms operators – yet they also present them with a range of major challenges. Number management is now more complicated than ever due to the impact of local number portability activity, complex service offerings from providers that might include both mobile and fixed-line numbers, and increased reporting needs to meet the latest regulations.

Managing the number inventory accurately is a critical requirement for any operator. Poor management can lead to problems with quality, multiple assignments of the same number, complex multi-system data synchronisation issues and, most importantly of all, unhappy customers.

Scoping the Challenges

Today’s telcoms operators are well aware of the need to manage their number resources as efficiently as possible to ensure that they always have the right type of number available to meet any eventuality. Achieving this has, however, always been a challenge – and the nature of that challenge has changed dramatically over time.

Ten years ago, operators’ main concerns around number management related to first acquiring numbers, then allocating them and then reporting their utilisation to the regulatory authorities. Operators had to show ‘true need’ every time they ordered numbers and if they could not demonstrate to the regulators that they were using those numbers within a specified time-period they were forced to return them. The challenge for operators was simply understanding and reporting the utilisation of numbers across a range of regional business centres. It was a complex requirement but. even so, many operators tried to accommodate it through bespoke systems or by customising existing solutions.

Today, this need for a combination of usage monitoring and accurate reporting is still key for most operators, especially as emerging regions become more stringent about how numbers are managed and allocated.

At the same time, however, we are seeing increased interest from operators in better understanding and managing the total lifecycle of individual numbers so that when a customer leaves they can more effectively manage the reallocation of the number they leave behind. This capability has become particularly critical in the wireless communications space, where numbers must be constantly available in the pool to support rapid allocation and ultimately the expansion and growth of the operator’s footprint in the sector. Making the challenge still more difficult, users in many countries simply purchase a new SIM card when the previous pre-paid balance is exhausted, resulting in dramatic growth in the volume of telephone number churn.

Without an effective number management approach, operators often find that when they go to activate subscribers there is either no number available or alternatively the number they try to assign is already allocated to an existing customer. Typically, this results in an inability to provision a particular service to the customer, potentially leading to the loss of business and ultimately even of competitive edge.

The challenges facing operators are further compounded by a related number management concern – the need to manage other number oriented resources in line with the diversification of the sector in general and the growth of the wireless sector in particular. SIM cards, and the MSISDN and IMSI numbers that are associated with them all need to be dealt with effectively. And this challenge relates both to provisioning and also the additional resources that are required to activate a wireless subscriber.

As they grew their wireless subscriber base, operators came to realise that when they activated a new subscriber they did not just need the correct telephone number for a specific region, they also needed to manage the allocation of the corresponding SIM and IMSI required to activate the relevant handset. Just as importantly, those numbers would all have to be managed efficiently from initial receipt to activation and provisioning and then through the entire customer lifecycle.

Operators’ development of more complex service offerings, presents them with another related challenge. As the demand for phone numbers grows, the management of phone numbers and associated resources becomes more complex. Ensuring a number is ‘clean’ before assigning it to a customer is increasingly important, but difficult to achieve as number inventory is often dispersed across multiple billing and CRM systems.

Issues with the Legacy Approach

So, how effective have operators been in overcoming these challenges so far? Historically, they have taken one of two approaches. Some operators decided to use their in-house IT team to create their own internal system while others have preferred to extend the functionality of existing third party-provided billing or network systems to cover the requirement.

Unfortunately, with both of these approaches, there are issues with scalability and flexibility. Both methods fail to handle large volumes of telephone numbers effectively and both struggle to deal with the need to continuously activate new numbering resources on the network. These systems also typically neglect entirely the need to efficiently manage the numbering resource lifecycle.

As communications services have grown and evolved, service providers have come to realize the difficulties of expanding their capabilities associated with management of numbering resources. For example, the seemingly basic need of searching and allocating numbers by type or rate centre is difficult without actively managing the type of resource including tracking the status of the resource through its lifecycle This results in negatively impacting the business agility of the operator concerned by preventing it from allocating a particular type of number to a specific subscriber.

The inability to manage resources by a variety of states and combinations also raises significant challenges for those service providers that wish to market new innovative services. For example, an emerging practice is to reserve and price numbers based upon business value, often called ‘vanity’ or ‘golden’ numbers. With legacy systems, it has often been difficult for operators to search numbers by patterns and then either pre-provision them or set them aside to be allocated later.

Towards the Next Generation

So, with legacy systems failing to deliver the versatility and functionality required to handle their increasingly complex needs, operators are now looking towards a new generation of number management solutions, which allow them to enjoy the business benefits of expanded and flexible resource management on cost-effective computing platforms.

The best of these next generation solutions have expanded core capability in several areas. These solutions are capable, for example, of handling the standard need to categorise and store numbers and manage their state proactively throughout the lifecycle. This capability then allows operators to better monitor and understand number allocation and create and submit the necessary reports to satisfy any business or regulatory requirement.

The best next-generation number management solutions have also evolved to the point where they allow operators to define their own number states – ‘active’, ‘inactive’, or ‘pending activation’, for example, and then track and monitor those states across the lifecycle.

A third key area of improvement is through expansion of managed resources to include the procurement, bundling, and allocation of wireless numbering resources along with a telephone number.

Handling Complexity and Delivering Efficiency

To be effective, today’s number management solutions need to be able to translate complexity into straightforward solutions delivery. They must be capable of supporting a single number inventory source for all types of numbering resources including mobile, fixed line and VoIP. Equally, they must provide extensive yet simplified integration support for multiple and diverse systems such as billing, network, and number portability through service oriented architectures.

For efficient management of numbering resource inventories, it is important to consider the ability to gather and react to information through near real-time updates, process automation and the flexibility to handle difficult exception scenarios. The most sophisticated solutions are now incorporating key functions that can significantly improve number management efficiency.

Typically, these new capabilities inventory dashboards that provide number administrators with up-to-date utilisation calculations and forecasts for all markets and regions, the ability to create custom rules to ensure number inventory never empties of available numbers and automated utilisation notifications that enable operators to find out about number shortages before they become a problem.

Looking Ahead

Today’s operators are increasingly demanding open, centralised number management systems with the flexibility and scalability necessary to enable them to store, assign and track their entire mobile number inventories. By using the latest number management systems, operators can not only ensure that they better manage their number-related inventory but also that they always have the numbers they need to meet customer demand, which in today’s fast-moving telecoms environment is becoming ever more difficult to predict.

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Winston has joined Volubill with a successful history of achievements selling integrated convergent mediation, support activation, interconnect billing, least-cost routing and convergent rating options to all major multi-country operators in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Latin American operators are looking at policy control and online charging with excellent interest as a means to intelligently manage their network resources and reconnect their revenue and cost models,” said Rick Woods, Vice President Americas, Volubill. “This is reflected by the significant uptake in mobile services in these markets, where you will find now much more than half-a-billion wireless subscribers and market penetration exceeds 86%. Volubill’s increased local presence in these regions will provide operators with an experienced resource for effectively monetizing the mobile information surge.”

He continues, “We are making a substantial investment within the Americas. Winston’s experience and relationships within the region will serve us well as we look to support a growing demand for our solutions within the Americas.”

Originally from Venezuela, Winston has been dependent within the US for the last decade. His regional knowledge and telecom encounter will help Volubill’s expansion goals within the region.

Volubill’s policy manage and charging solutions equip support providers with immediate and cost-effective relief to efficiently manage exploding data usage. Fully compliant with 3GPP’s policy and charging rules function (PCRF) specifications, Volubill’s CHARGE-IT™ and CONTROL-IT™ products provide real-time intelligence to ensure that operators can dynamically allocate resources to maximize throughput within the limits of their current networks, helping to manage network growth-related capital expenditures and capitalize on premium, revenue-generating new services.

Volubill offers innovative “on the network” charging and policy control solutions to telecom operators Worldwide. The company’s solutions enable operators to manage bandwidth dependent on subscriber- and service-centric usage policies and quotas in order to maximize revenues and support experience and eliminate churn. Transcending the boundaries between the network and IT systems, Volubill offers flexibility and unlocks the potential of real-time BSS integration. Founded in 2001, Volubill is a global organization with more than 75 clients worldwide.

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Vivacom is the new name of the company that unifies the BTC and Vivatel services, the fixed-line and mobile offerings from Bulgarian Telecommunications Company. Vivatel, the mobile arm, has been successfully using Neural Technologies’ Minotaur™ Fraud Management Solution for several years, with a rival solution installed at BTC. When the decision came to combine the fixed and mobile operations Minotaur™ was selected as the preferred solution to manage Vivacom’s fraud challenges going forward.

“Having worked closely with both ECtel and Neural Technologies for several years and experienced both product and service offerings, we ultimately selected Minotaur™, due to the inherent flexibility of the product – which satisfies our current and future business requirements – and the consistently high quality of support provided by Neural Technologies”, said Kolyo Savov, Director of Revenue Assurance for Vivacom.

Said Luke Taylor of Neural Technologies, “Bringing the fraud management functions of Vivacom’s fixed line and mobile services together is a smart move that will offer benefits in terms of efficiency and revenue savings. We look forward to continuing to work with Vivacom to ensure both their networks have the best possible protection against fraud and revenue loss”.

About Neural Technologies
Neural Technologies (Nt) has established itself as a leading provider of risk management software solutions. Formed in 1990, the company has built upon a foundation in neural analysis and design to provide quality products that increase bottom-line returns for its customers.

Nt’s solutions empower organisations to minimise financial risk to their business, providing comprehensive risk management capability in the areas of fraud, bad debt, customer attrition, collections, revenue assurance and security.

Nt has twice been ranked in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table of the UK’s top technology companies and was named Large Technology Supplier of the Year 2008 by the British Computer Society.

The company has a customer base of around 40 organisations worldwide, including Sprint, Oi, T-Mobile, MTN, Zain, Telkom SA, Orange, O2, VimpelCom, TDC, GE Money, DiGi Malaysia, Axtel and Digitel.

For more information, visit www.neuralt.com.

About Vivacom

VIVACOM is the trademark of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company AD (BTC), Bulgaria’s incumbent telecoms operator. The company offers a full range of telecom services – fixed and mobile telephony, broadband Internet and data transfer. It has the country’s largest and best-developed telecom infrastructure. VIVACOM’s converged services are available in over 1 000 outlets of the operator and its dealers throughout Bulgaria.

For more information visit: www.vivacom.bg

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The benchmark, carried out by Intec on Intel’s latest Xeon® processor 7500 series, validated the performance of Singl.eView’s critical functions:
• Real-time rating and balance management
• Batch post-event rating
• Bill cycle processing

Singl.eView is relied upon by many of the largest and most innovative communications service providers (CSPs) worldwide. Singl.eView’s efficient, distributed architecture allows CSPs to lower their operating costs by supporting all rating, balance management, charging and billing tasks on a single platform, serving postpaid, prepaid and convergent customers for all classes of product and service. The Intel Xeon® processor 7500 series ushers in a new era in performance and scalability within the fast growing x86 server market. Singl.eView, running on the Intel Xeon platform, provides a powerful and cost-effective solution for today’s service providers, allowing an attractive price-performance ratio with more than adequate headroom to support the growing volume of increasingly complex demands of modern transaction processing.

Commented Wolfgang Petersen, EMEA Director of Intel Software & Services Group, “The results of this benchmark prove that BSS customers need no longer be dependent on expensive proprietary servers, and can be confident that Intel-based affordable processing solutions powered by the Xeon® 7500 series can easily manage highly-demanding workloads, and deliver the real-time performance necessary for a modern, converged communications service provider.”

The benchmark outcome demonstrated excellent performance and linear scalability across a range of real-time convergent rating, balance management, on-line transaction processing, and charging and billing tasks typical for a large service provider environment. It also showcased Singl.eView’s horizontal scalability, executing real-time and batch-based charging and billing scenarios typical of a convergent service provider.

“In today’s highly competitive markets CSPs are looking for solutions that will scale with their business, delivering consistent high-performance, at predictable cost, without sacrificing flexibility,” said David Heaps, Chief Product & Strategy Officer for Intec. “As evidenced by this benchmark, CSPs that use Singl.eView for their real-time charging and billing can be confident that they have chosen a solution which meets and potentially exceeds all these objectives.”

The benchmark was conducted in early 2010 at Intec’s Brisbane, Australia R&D facility with Singl.eView v7.0 on Intel Xeon® processor 7500-based servers running Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3(1). The testing focused on various conditions for voice, data and content services, typical of today’s dynamic operator environments.

• When used primarily for real-time authorisation, just a single 4-socket (32 core) Intel Xeon® 7550 server demonstrated the capacity to handle up to 13 million high-usage subscribers at only 50% system load(2).

• When used primarily for postpaid billing, that same Intel Xeon® 7550 server demonstrated the capacity to handle up to 25 million high-usage subscribers(3).

For more information on Singl.eView’s Intel Xeon® 7500 series benchmark results contact info@intecbilling.com
Notes:

(1) Singl.eView is also supported on Red Hat Linux 5.3.

(2) For a system in which prepaid subscribers are dominant, real-time authorisation requests can be performed at the rate of 13,000 requests per second using 32 cores at full CPU load. For real production loads, processing of the expected average busy hour load should not use more than approximately 50% of the available CPU capacity. This allows for additional OLTP load during the busy hour in addition to providing more capacity for occasional spikes in the real time request rate. Thus, 32 cores would be used to handle real-world production loads of around 7500 requests per second as the average busy hour rate. For real time request loads which are dominated by services like SMS, and assuming 1.5 Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA) per subscriber, this rate of 7500 requests per second corresponds to being able to process real-time authorisation requests from 13 million subscribers.

(3) For a system in which postpaid subscribers are dominant, billing of subscribers governs the system sizing. 32 cores were able to generate 315,000 invoices per hour at full CPU load. In a production system, 100% of the CPU can never be dedicated to billing. At 80% CPU utilisation, and assuming 15 bill cycles per month each with a billing window of 10 hours per cycle, the 32 cores allows for billing of 25 million postpaid subscribers, with 300 events/subscriber/month as the average monthly usage across the 25 million subscribers and which includes itemised call details on the invoice image.

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