Intec Telecom Systems and IBM have completed a performance benchmark of Intec Convergent Billing v6, the latest version of the market-leading customer care and billing system, on IBM System p5 servers, demonstrating the capability to handle a sustained throughput equivalent to the needs of a customer base of 60 million pre-paid subscribers. The benchmark was based on a current customer implementation and reflected realistic operating conditions and data.

Intec Convergent Billing v6 is designed to offer scalable, leading-edge performance for any combination of payment method and communications technology, including pre- and post-paid, fixed, wireless, and next-generation services, for operators and service providers of all types and sizes.

“While some benchmarks are synthesized to show a product at its theoretical best, we’ve used a real-world configuration based on the production environment in one of our major customers,” said Gary Bunney, Intec’s COO. “Showing that Intec Convergent Billing can support 60 million pre-paid subscribers on IBM servers is an outstanding result. This benchmark provides further confidence to our tier 1 telecom customers of the market-leading performance of our convergent charging and billing platform.”

The benchmark was conducted in September 2006 at IBM’s performance laboratory in Montpellier, France on two IBM System p5 595 servers, each with 64 1.9GHz processors in a clustered configuration with a shared database. The benchmark demonstrated high performance and linear scalability across a range of real-time convergent rating, balance management, on-line transaction processing, charging and billing tasks from a typical large carrier environment.

“The benchmark has shown once again that IBM System p5 servers are an excellent choice for large telecommunications service providers,” said Fabrice Moyen, IBM System p Benchmarks Manager at Montpellier. “We have demonstrated that Intec Convergent Billing v6 on IBM System p5 servers is able to manage the demanding workloads and deliver the necessary real-time performance of a modern, converged service provider.”

The test included both on-line and off-line charging. While performing on-line charging (a standard requirement in pre-paid or now-paid services), Intec Convergent Billing v6 achieved sustained throughput of more than 30,000 events per second, representing 45 million calls per hour. Transaction latency was outstanding, averaging less than 17ms. During off-line billing, Intec Convergent Billing v6 processed 570,000 invoices per hour. Projections from tests done at the same time showed that upgrading the IBM System p5 servers to the latest 2.3GHz Power5+ CPUs will provide a 25% improvement in throughput, giving a capacity of more than 75 million pre-paid subscribers.

Intec Convergent Billing v6 (Singl.eView) is Intec’s market-leading billing and customer management system that is relied upon by many of the largest and most innovative telecommunications service providers worldwide. Its efficient architecture allows service providers to lower their cost of billing by supporting all rating, balance management, charging and billing on one platform, across pre-paid, post-paid and all classes of customer and product.

About IBM
For more information about IBM, go to: www.ibm.com

About Intec
Intec supplies billing software solutions to over 60 percent of the world’s top 100 telecoms carriers and is one of the world’s fastest growing major BSS/OSS (business and operations support systems) vendors. Intec’s 400 customers include BellSouth Telecommunications Inc., Cable & Wireless, The Carphone Warehouse (UK), China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Eircom (Ireland), France Telecom, Hutchison 3G, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Vivo and Verizon.

Founded in 1997, Intec is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ITL.L) and has over 1,700 staff and 31 offices in 25 countries. For more information, visit the Intec website at www.intecbilling.com