The journey with MediationZone® at T-Mobile Macedonia started in mid 2008. Number portability was to be introduced and required a major re-design of the existing mediation streams. There was also a need for new mediation functionality in order to introduce 3G and a triple play service branded as Family+. Given that the legacy mediation systems were inflexible and difficult to use, a new solution was needed to meet the projected timelines.

As a part of the selection processes for a new mediation platform, T-Mobile invited three vendors including DigitalRoute to provide a proof-of-concept demonstration. “Flexibility, ease of deployment and performance were the most important factors to us and we were very impressed with MediationZone. We were able to handle massive volumes on commodity hardware while the requirements for the proof-of-concept could be achieved in a few hours”, said Dragan Stankovski, System Integration Team Leader at T-Mobile. “With MediationZone we can complete in days what would otherwise take weeks or months”, he added.
The proof-of-concept was followed by a two-phase implementation program of MediationZone. The first phase covered the specific requirements related to number portability, WCDMA and Family+. In a second phase T-Mobile Macedonia replaced six legacy mediation systems with MediationZone. This simplification of the mediation environment not only reduced the data integrations cost for T-Mobile but greatly reduced the complexity of the operations and the launching of new services.
“MediationZone is definitely among the best performing systems that we have and it is strategically one of the most important systems when it comes to decreasing time-to-market for new services”, said Mine Pavlovski, Executive Director of IT.

“I am seeing Mediation Zone as a crucial component in our IT infrastructure, compliant with all our plans for consolidation of IT systems in both fix and mobile lines of business. It’s a promising system, fully compliant with our Next Generation development program”, said Miroslav Jovanovic, Chief IT Officer.

Encouraged by the success with MediationZone, T-Mobile Macedonia is planning to further extend the use of MediationZone in several new projects including a converged operations environment for fixed and mobile networks and using mediation as a solution enabler for prepaid refill, integrating the point-of-sales platform with the real-time charging system.

“When we saw MediationZone, the first thing that I liked about it was its flexibility and powerful set of functionalities. What I can say from today’s perspective, after two years having Mediation Zone in our IT infrastructure is that it completely proves my first impression. That is the main reason why we plan to consolidate and migrate several other systems like mPayment and eRecharge in Mediation Zone platform and to start using it in high availability mode”, said Kristijan Kolev, Deputy Director for Rating, Billing and Payment.

“We are very proud of T-Mobile Macedonia’s decision to choose DigitalRoute’s MediationZone”, said Jan Karlsson, CEO at DigitalRoute, “I encourage any service provider to contact us for an estimate of how much we can improve time-to-market for new services and reduce the cost-of-ownership for mediation”, he adds.

About T-Mobile Macedonia
?-Mobile is the first mobile operator in Macedonia and a leader in the mobile market. The company has been active since September 1996. In 2006 the company was re-named into ?-Mobile Macedonia, becoming part of the international ?-Mobile family. The confidence of more than 1 300 000 subscribers in Macedonia, confirms our leading position and obliges us to continue our mission – to become the most highly regarded service company. We are proud of our network quality, which we continuously upgrade to provide high quality and affordable services. Our network covers 99.9% of the population and over 99% of the territory of the Republic of Macedonia.

In Macedonia T-Mobile is recognized as the innovation leader. The company was first to introduce GPRS and EDGE thus significantly increasing the data transfer speed. By following T-Mobile service strategy, we are seeking converged internet and mobile services. ?-Mobile customers can communicate all over the world, using our roaming service offered in over 90 countries.

About DigitalRoute
DigitalRoute was founded in 2000 to provide best-of-breed mediation to telecom network and service providers worldwide. MediationZone® from DigitalRoute supports any combination of online/offline and active/bi-directional mediation of voice, data and content services, with carrier-grade functionality and unparalleled flexibility. There are more than 180 MediationZone deployments across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North America, South America, Asia and Oceania. More information can be found at www.digitalroute.com