Telarix, Inc., the leading provider of Interconnect Business Optimization (IBO) software for telecom carriers, today announced that Telecom Italia Sparkle had trialed and replaced a competitive interconnect system with Telarix’s iXTools solution to more effectively manage its interconnect partner agreements, optimize its routing, streamline its buy and sell processes and increase the overall profitability of its interconnect operations. Three of the world’s five largest telecom providers depend on iXTools to optimize their interconnect business.

Telecom Italia Sparkle (TIS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia SpA, is one of Europe’s leading telecom carriers. A full service provider, Telecom Italia Sparkle offers a robust portfolio of voice, IP, bandwidth and managed data services for fixed-line and mobile operators, ISPs and, in synergy with Telecom Italia, multinational corporations. The carrier was recently ranked by analysts as Europe’s leading player in terms of voice service revenues and among the top carriers worldwide in terms of total voice traffic. “iXTools is becoming the industry standard for optimizing interconnect operations,” said Mr. Arturo Danesi, Senior Vice President of Wholesale Marketing for Telecom Italia Sparkle. “The deployment of their innovative agreement management, optimized routing and comprehensive trading modules will enable Telecom Italia Sparkle to significantly reduce its operating costs while making the company more competitive in the global marketplace.

“The success of this project has been the result of the active contribution and strong integration of a number of involved parties including marketing and network users as well as all the development teams from TI-Sparkle, TI-Information Technology, and Telarix. This successful collaboration has led to the enrichment of the product with a number of sophisticated business and technical rules and additional features that have increased the value of the solution for all parties”.

“Through a couple of parallel initiatives including the IP-based reengineering of the network to rely only on softswitches and the automation of the routing process, we have successfully implemented a unique solution supporting TIS’ end-to-end voice process, from pricing/selling to routing design and implementation in the network, including the integration with TIS’ softswitch VOIP infrastructure,” said Mr. Gianfranco Ciccarella, Senior Vice President of Networks and Information technology. “After an extensive evaluation of competing interconnect management offerings, Telecom Italia Sparkle chose Telarix’s iXTools to gain the new technology advantages and functionality required to effectively process hundreds of millions of network events while managing complex routing algorithms at commercial and technical levels.

“iXTools was evaluated, enhanced and deployed as a joint project with the Telecom Italia team. We worked as partners with Telarix and together ensured the project was delivered on schedule and budget. The success of this project is an affirmation of the team’s hard work, commitment, and willingness to align IT strategies with business processes within the dynamic business environment and network volume and complexity of TIS.”

“The new level of complexity in which carriers now operate is rendering billing-focused interconnect solution offerings obsolete,” said Amir Yazdanpanah, CEO of Telarix. “To effectively manage costs and grow revenue, forward thinking carriers like Telecom Italia Sparkle are deploying integrated, comprehensive interconnect optimization solutions that provide real-time intelligence about all the traffic moving across their network. By delivering real-time decision intelligence, Telecom Italia’s business and operations managers now have a holistic view of their entire interconnection operation.”

About Telecom Italia Sparkle
Telecom Italia Sparkle S.p.A. (TI Sparkle) is the wholly-owned Telecom Italia Group (NYSE:TI) subsidiary with the mission to develop and consolidate the Italian telco’s international wholesale business. As a global carrier, TI Sparkle offers a full range of voice, data, Internet protocol (IP) and bandwidth service solutions to fixed and mobile network carriers, Internet service providers (ISPs) and, in tandem with Telecom Italia, to multinational enterprises and groups. Find out more about Telecom Italia Sparkle at www.telecomitaliasparkle.com.

About Telarix
Telarix, Inc. delivers the leading Interconnect Business Optimization (IBO) software solution, providing telecommunications companies the ability to easily manage costs and drive profitability on their interconnect networks. Telarix’s innovative platform, iXTools, maximizes carrier profitability by leveraging operational intelligence to enable real-time business decisions. The company’s Web-based tools analyze and report on traffic, rates and destinations almost as quickly as the calls move across the global network. Telarix customers include global Tier-1 carriers such as Deutsche Telecom, BellSouth, Embratel, Portugal Telecom, Global Crossing, KDDI, Telefónica, TELUS, Verizon and more. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia in the United States. The company has worldwide offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Singapore and India. For more information about Telarix, visit our website at www.telarix.com.