Highdeal, the world’s leading provider of pricing and rating solutions, has told OSS News Review that Highdeal Transactive® software suite has been selected by Axione, a carriers’ carrier specializing in the management of local public broadband and high speed broadband services.

Now part of ETDE, a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, Axione was founded in 2003 and deployed France’s first fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network, “Pau Broadband Country”. The company is currently building and operating eleven digital networks under public service outsourcing contracts. Axione provides various turnkey services to telecommunications operators, ranging from network design and building to server hosting to line provisioning to the maintenance and operation of broadband (DSL, Wimax) and high speed broadband (FTTH, FTTB) networks.

Axione’s customers include all leading telecommunications operators as well as local ISPs in every public service outsourcing district in France.

In order to meet the requirements of its many customers, Axione wanted to implement a single pricing, rating and billing solution that was both flexible and scalable. Highdeal was selected for several reasons. The Highdeal Transactive® rating engine allows each customer to develop its own pricing policy and to automate usage calculation and resulting billing processes by defining customized offerings that are best suited to end users. In addition, this diverse pricing scheme is hosted on a single software platform.

Axione also wanted to be able to:
- Implement wholesale billing for nationwide ISPs and/or detailed third-party billing for local ISPs
- Manage billing efficiently as part of public service outsourcing
- Implement the reconciliation process required to check the accuracy of invoices received from major service providers, especially when managing unbundling processes

Axione was particularly impressed by Highdeal Transactive’s flexibility and functional adaptability to its business requirements. This flexibility makes it easier to design a wide range of offerings in very short timeframes. Excellent cooperation between Highdeal and the integrator Capgemini Telecom & Media as well as the trust established with salespeople and support engineers were also instrumental in Axione’s decision.

“Highdeal Transactive was a natural choice because this software suite was natively designed to manage the complexity of new services. It allows us to offer a complete solution matching our customers’ needs, while at the same time providing third-party billing capabilities. We appreciate this tool because it goes beyond traditional billing solutions in that it enables analysis of cash flows associated with actually provided services in order to make necessary correlations to check actually collected revenues as part of our revenue assurance process,” said Roland Latrive, Chief Information Officer of Axione.

“Highdeal is proud to have such a customer as Axione, whose increasing reputation and sustained growth are particularly impressive. Highdeal’s selection by Axione once again confirms our expertise in enabling operators to quickly develop new services and increase their revenues,” said Eric Lavenir, EVP Sales EMEA at Highdeal.

About Axione
Axione, part of ETDE—a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction—specializes in the building and operation of broadband and high speed Broadband networks for telecommunications operators and local communities in the scope of their digital development projects on the French territory. Axione is currently active in France under 11 public service outsourcing contracts signed with Dorsal Limousin, the departments of Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire (1 and 2), Loire, Nièvre, Charente-Maritime, and the cities of Pau (Very Broadband FTTH), Gonfreville l’Orcher (Le Havre – high speed broadband FTTH), Quimper and Tours. These outsourcing contracts have allowed Axione to deploy FTTH, Wimax and DSL access networks with a presence in over 500 subscriber connection nodes (NRAs).

For more information, visit www.axione.fr

About Capgemini
Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services, enables its clients to transform and perform through technologies. Capgemini provides its clients with insights and capabilities that boost their freedom to achieve superior results through a unique way of working, which it calls the “Collaborative Business Experience”. Capgemini reported 2006 global revenues of EUR 7.7 billion and employs over 75,000 people worldwide.

Telecom, Media & Entertainment is the sector of Capgemini, which has been dedicated to serving the telecom and media markets for more than 30 years. Its business expertise covers Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services for telecom and communication companies, on a national and international scale.

With sector knowledge and strong partnerships, Capgemini Telecom & Media develops solutions in areas such as CRM, decision support systems, service platforms, billing, operations support, and services dedicated to content suppliers.

About Highdeal
Highdeal is the world’s leading provider of Pricing & Rating solutions. By delivering unconstrained pricing and packaging flexibility coupled with real-time transaction management, Highdeal solves the billing problem in the multiservice world. The Yankee Group has named Highdeal the fastest growing billing and rating vendor defined in terms of announced customers. With over 180 implementations in more than 50 countries, service providers around the world rely on Highdeal.

For more information, please visit www.highdeal.com