New Zealand technology and telecommunications company Argent Networks announced today that it has acquired Australian telecommunications solutions company Integration Management. As an operational support system (OSS) provider, Integration Management (IM) provides revenue assurance and settlement solution software to some of the largest telecommunications carriers in Australia, Asia, the Middle East and theUnited States including AAPT, Telecom NZ, Celcom of Malaysia, PLDT of the Philippines, and Indosat of Indonesia. With offices in Sydney, Singapore and Denver, Colorado, IM has a strong reputation for its technologically advanced products like in>Bill in the voice interconnect, content management and wholesale verification categories.

Argent already has a number of blue-chip clients in the Australian and New Zealand market, including Telstra and Virgin Mobile. Chris Jones, CEO of Argent Networks, says that the IM acquisition gives Argent an immediate footprint into other global markets particularly parts of Asia Pacific and the United States. “For Argent, the IM deal means we can continue grow exponentially faster in keyglobal telecommunications markets in Asia as well as expand our existing customer base throughout other parts of the world such as the Middle East where Argent is already a dominant player.”

Jones says that for IM customers the acquisition is business as usual. Argent Networks will quickly incorporate the existing IM suite of products and now be able to offer telecommunications operators an expanded and more competitive range of solutions, including end-to-end OSS solutions. “Argent is experiencing tremendous growth in all its markets and we are now looking to make acquisitions where it is strategically advantageous to do so and can help accelerate penetration into other segments. IM will certainly enable us to access even more telecommunications carriers and their customers.” “IM’s products are also complementary to Argent’s Eclipse® billing and CRM solutions so the acquisition was a good fit for us. We are sure that it will assist in growing Argent’s overall financial and global market position as a leading supplier of OSS and billing solutions to telecommunications suppliers everywhere.”

About Argent Networks
Argent Networks provides real-time mediation, rating, billing and customer care solutions for prepaid and postpaid voice, data and content. Argent’s convergent billing solutions enable communications service providers to provision, rate and bill for 3G/2.5G and 2G mobile and provide value added services solutions including SMSC, MMS and VMS. Argent’s customers include the world’s largest communication providers, servicing and billing millions of subscribers in over 25 countries across the globe. For more information, please visit www.argentnetworks.com.