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Home Archives for Telecom Billing and Charging

Roadpost Selects CostGuard XG OSS BSS from Info Directions to Support Operations

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Info Directions, a developer of net-centric billing, rating, order management, workflow and selling solutions for the telecommunications industry, is pleased to announce that Toronto-based service provider, Roadpost Inc., has selected its CostGuard(R) XG back office solution to help manage the launch of new services to the company’s international business clients.

“Our six-year partnership with Info Directions has delivered value to our organization and to the customers we serve,” said Roadpost’s Director of IT Louis Chang. “CostGuard XG will give us the flexibility to provide additional products and services to our customers and adapt to the changes taking place in the communications marketplace. We are focused on leveraging our strengths as a service provider to simplify the lives of our clients when they travel abroad and CostGuard XG is a key part of our efforts.”

Launched in 1991, Roadpost provides customized global communications to individuals and corporations, offering subscriptions and short-term rental of cellular, satellite and personal digital assistant communications services. The company’s portfolio includes International Cellular, Global Satellite, International BlackBerry and Worldwide Internet services providing complete global coverage. Roadpost has alliances with industry leaders such as 02(UK)Ltd, Transatel, Swisscom, Telecom Italia Mobile, Vodafone, Bell Mobility, TELUS Mobility, Iridium, France Telecom Mobile Services, iPass, Research in Motion, Motorola and Nokia which allow it to deliver reliable and secure communications. [Read more…]

Croatia’s Metronet Deploys Convergys’ Infinys Billing Solution in Newly Deregulated Telecom Market

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Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG) provided a unique set of product, consulting, and professional services to implement and integrate a new billing solution to support Croatia’s Metronet telekomunikacije d.d. with complex triple play billing, speedy introduction of new services, and rapid customer growth in Croatia’s newly deregulated telecom market. The Convergys solution for Metronet has gone live, implemented in a matter of months as opposed to longer timeframes often seen in the communications industry.

“As an aggressive new competitor in the triple play arena, we know the importance of speed to market and simplified billing for a complex bundled triple play offering,” said Dennis Rukavina, Chief Financial Officer at Metronet. “We made a strategic commitment in selecting Convergys to consult and implement its solution including Infinys, a comprehensive, off-the-shelf solution that could immediately support the diverse requirements of our sophisticated product suite, and scale to meet our future needs as we undergo rapid expansion.”

The Convergys on-site consulting team completed the implementation on time and within budget in just five months using Convergys’ worldwide implementation best practices learned through over 20 years of experience. As part of the solution, Convergys implemented Infinys [tm], its award winning comprehensive, convergent, business support system software. [Read more…]

Digicel Reaches 2 Million Customers with Launch of VoluBill’s Charge It Solutions

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VoluBill, a supplier of real-time charging, control and monitoring applications for IP-based mobile services, today announced the successful launch of its latest versions of Charge it™ for Browsing, Charge It™ for Delivery and Charge it™ for IP solutions in Digicel’s mobile network operations in Trinidad & Tobago and Haiti. Through the installation of VoluBill’s products Digicel is now able to support pre-paid charging for mobile data, content and messaging services for millions of wireless subscribers across its expanding pan Caribbean GSM network of 20 Caribbean markets.

“It is with great pleasure that we announce that Digicel has purchased and deployed our enhanced “Charge it “ solution and the results of the implementation have exceeded expectations,” explains John Aalbers, VoluBill’s CEO. “This is due to the solutions’ cutting edge, real-time technology, which enables Digicel to seamlessly and cost-effectively apply revenue enhancing pre-paid charging plans. VoluBill’s solutions achieve this objective by measuring and charging mobile data, content and messaging services accessed by Digicel’s two million plus subscribers on pre-paid tariffs. The results are greater revenue streams and reliable, non-labour intensive network maintenance.”

Founded in 2001, Jamaica-based Digicel is the leading and fastest-growing GSM network provider in the Caribbean. The company has played an important role in the advancement of cellular communications in the region, offering innovative, competitively priced products and services as well as superior customer care to over two million subscribers. VoluBill’s advanced and well proven solutions enables Digicel to successfully manage its growing subscriber base and offer excellent network coverage as it continues its development across the Caribbean islands. [Read more…]

Intec Upgrades Interconnect Billing Product

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Intec, a global provider of business and operations support systems (BSS/OSS) for fixed, mobile and next-generation networks, has launched the latest version of Intec Interconnect (previously known as InterconnecT), the world’s leading convergent rating, billing and settlement solution.

Hassan Iftikhar, Intec vice president of product management, said, “With Intec Interconnect v7.1, you choose the functionality needed to suit different environments and settlement requirements. Requirements such as pre-processing, ITU, automated reconciliation and partner relationship management become useful for many service providers as they reach specific milestones in their business development. For example, allowing partners secure, web-based self service facilities may become cost effective after specific services are implemented, or after a particular number of partners are acquired.”

A modular, flexible solution, Intec Interconnect v7.1 supports all service architectures and all settlement billing models, from voice, data and SMS interconnection to international route-based tariffs (ITU), new IP and revenue sharing based agreements with multimedia content VoIP and m-commerce partners. The system offers customers a seamless and efficient transition from traditional telephony into the world of IP and content from the same, single platform. [Read more…]

Elitecore Technologies Changes Name of JISP Billing to Crestel Convergent Billing

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Elitecore Technologies has announced a change of name from JISP Billing to Crestel Convergent Billing. Crestel accurately depicts the end-to-end capabilities of the solution which are in tune with the market movement towards triple-play convergence.

“Crestel represents our core concept of building Scale with Margins in rapidly emerging economies like India and China,” says Nikhil Jain, President and COO, Elitecore Technologies, vendor of Crestel. “Considering the low penetration in these economies, operator concerns involve rapid scale rollouts while delivering high-end, value-added services simultaneously. This requires deep segmentation and high level of innovation at both ends,” he adds.

Crestel is based on a convergent billing framework, providing next generation triple-play services to wireline and wireless networks over a single platform. [Read more…]

NewMarket Technology VOIP Subsidiary XIPTEL Communications Launches Proprietary Decision Support Solution

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Newmarket Technology’s VoIP Subsidiary XIPTEL Communications has launched their proprietary solution for managing a company’s back office operations. XCCP, (Xiptel Customer Control Panel), the core component of XIPTEL’s intellectual property portfolio, has been running the back office functions for XIPTEL since January 2006, and is now available to selected customers.

“Customers can now get on-line access to incoming and outgoing calls whenever they want, from wherever they are,” said Peter Geddis, XIPTEL’s CEO. “Today’s VoIP based systems provide a long list of important features to customers,” said Geddis, “but unless access to useful information and control is made easy and reliable, many of those features will remain unused. Our XCCP system solves those problems, adds real value to our company, and helps set us apart from our competition. Offering new products and services, such as XCCP, is an integral step to building our revenue base to $10 million for this year and meeting our forecast for 100% growth in 2007.”

XCCP handles the back office tasks involved with subscriber management, provisioning, support ticketing, call detail reporting and mediation, and billing. The software features a multi-level security and permissions architecture to allow subscribers, customer administrators, resellers, and system billing, engineering, and executive users to view and manage those elements necessary for day to day operations and planning. [Read more…]

ONO Uses Convergys Infinys Software for Services Bundling, Flexible Pricing, and Increased Cable Market Penetration in Spain

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Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a leader in integrated billing, employee care, and customer care services, announced today its Infinys [tm] rating and billing software is in live operation at ONO, the leading broadband communications operator in Spain. Convergys is providing convergent billing across all of ONO’s services, bolstering its “triple play” offerings of voice, data, and video services, and helping to increase market penetration throughout Spain.

“Because we’ve worked with Convergys since ONO was formed in 1998, we’ve experienced the considerable value and cost efficiencies that Convergys and its solutions and services bring to our business,” said Jorge Vega, CRM and Billing IT Director, ONO. “Moreover, at a time when strong differentiation is needed to attract and retain customers, Convergys gives us the ability to better support our customers with bundled service offerings that meet their needs at competitive prices. With this new ability to differentiate our services, we will be better able to address our potential market of over eighteen million homes.”

The implementation involved the migration of all customers and accounts and over 2.5 million recurring charge services from ONO’s existing billing system to Infinys. [Read more…]

LHS Wins Best Contribution to Billing at IIR Billing and Information Management Systems 2006

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LHS, a leading provider of telecommunications billing and customer care systems has won the “Overall – Best contribution to billing” at the IIR’s World Billing Awards 2006 second year in a row. The World Billing Awards acknowledge best billing practice and raise awareness of how significant billing, charging, IT and associated processes are to the communications industry. LHS was selected for its efforts in supporting IMS and all-IP billing. In the category “Best billing implementation” LHS earned second place.

“We are delighted to acknowledge LHS as winner in the ‘Overall – Best Contribution to Billing’ category for their development work on IMS-ready products.” said Hugh Roberts, Chairman of the Awards Judging Panel and Consultant Director for IIR’s BSS/OSS and RM events. “This year for the first time we took the unusual step of imposing an additional last minute requirement on the finalists in the ‘Overall’ category – and it was significant that each of them chose to highlight a different aspect of their value proposition as the most compelling. It was interesting to us that only one of the finalists mentioned the need to confront and overcome the challenges of IMS and all-IP billing – and that company was LHS.”

LHS recognized the trend towards IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) very early. IMS is a layered horizontal network architecture based on IP standards enabling network operators to offer all kinds of new services to their customers, independent from the type of network access or device used. LHS has managed to cope with the requirements and challenges of IMS and all-IP billing, and taken the industry lead by integrating its key charging and accounting protocol Diameter into its product portfolio. This enables carriers on-line and offline billing in an all-IP environment. [Read more…]

mBlox Selects Valista Payment Platform for Mobile Internet Billing and WAP Billing

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Valista (www.valista.com), the leading provider of payments and merchandizing solutions enabling the purchase of premium digital services, today announced that mBlox, the world’s largest mobile transaction network, is deploying Valista’s end-to-end transaction engine — PaymentsPlus. mBlox selected the payment platform after a close comparison of the world’s leading vendors and will use it to support its next generation mobile billing services, including WAP billing.

Andrew Bud, Executive Chairman of mBlox, said, “The evolution of premium SMS, an industry we lead, into the next generation of mobile content billing is a huge opportunity for us. We will be able to offer a wider range of innovative and effective payment services for our customers. The mobile content industry will be able to deliver and bill content including mobile TV, video clips, gaming and music downloads. We chose Valista’s technology because it is proven to be the best in the industry, and are pleased to be working with a company with a similar customer-focused ethos to ourselves.”

Valista’s PaymentsPlus solution enables mobile transaction network providers and telecommunications operators to adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the global payments market by offering more flexible payment choices such as direct to mobile bill charging and WAP billing. [Read more…]

Alcatel Selects LHS Billing and Customer Care System for Pre-Postpaid Convergent Billing

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LHS, a provider of telecommunications billing and customer care systems and Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) announced today that they have extended their strategic partnership to offer a combined pre-post-paid convergent billing solution for simplified and cost-optimized billing operations.

Stéphane Terranova, President of Alcatel’s integration and services activities, commented: “Today, mobile operators need to compensate for the steady decline in revenue from voice services and reduce the cost of operations. Having a single billing system for both prepaid and postpaid customers will enable operators to increase operational efficiency. At the same time, the convergent solution will help operators to launch new pre- and postpaid services to fight fierce competition with faster time-to-market, and increase revenues. Alcatel has selected LHS’s BSCS for its proven superior functionality and excellent performance in the IT field, which perfectly fits with Alcatel’s real time billing leadership and over 10 years of expertise in the network field.”

The new solution combines LHS’s billing and customer care system, BSCS iX and Alcatel’s Payment Suite 4.4 with Alcatel’s project management and integration skills to provide an end-to-end convergent billing solution from customer management to network interaction. The convergent solution includes features such as real-time call control, full real-time convergent rating engine, and unified provisioning and customer care for prepaid and postpaid customers. [Read more…]

Elitecore Launches Convergent Billing Solution in Europe at Billing Systems 2006

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Elitecore Technologies has launched Crestel, its Convergent Billing Solution, in the European region through its participation in Billing Systems 2006. Formerly known as JISP Billing, Crestel is the carrier-grade billing, customer care, mediation and provisioning platform that enables next generation data, voice and video services over wireless and wireline networks.

“In the current highly evolutionary phase, operator success depends on a customer oriented approach rather than a technology-oriented one,” says Nikhil Jain, President and COO, Elitecore Technologies. “Crestel’s strength lies in its ability to build scale with margins, enhancing operator profitability and long-term stability.”

Crestel delivers scale with margins by facilitating convergence at the customer, OSS and BSS level, while enabling fine segmentation at the customer, service and geographic levels. The Western European Billing and OSS market is set to grow to nearly EUR1.4 billion by 2010, according to Analysys. Crestel aims to penetrate this market through a modular approach in addition to full systemic revamps. Crestel’s modular architecture delivers billing, customer care, mediation and provisioning, offering great flexibility and scalability to service providers. [Read more…]

Allround and Energoinvest Win Roaming Tender for Introduction of TAP3 Standard in BH Telecom’s GSM Billing System

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Allround, a supplier in the global roaming market and Energoinvest, a key player in the telecommunications market in Bosnia Herzegovina announced that their joint bid has been successful in winning roaming tender for the introduction of the TAP3 standard in BH Telecom’s GSM Billing System. The strong partnership between Allround and Energoinvest will guarantee that BH Telecom will benefit both from Allround’s global roaming expertise and Energoinvest’s extensive local support.

“The contract was awarded and selected from a high level of competition that tested suppliers ability for local support competitiveness and ability to grow with our company” said Ms. Tanja Trivanovic, Project Manager at BH Telecom.

Bosnia Herzegovina represents a new addition to the expanding list of countries, where Allround’s highly reliable TAP Solution is deployed. It is a very thoroughly tested, robust application that proved its worth in several similar reference projects. [Read more…]

Manx Telecom Secures British Approvals Board of Telecommunications BABT Approval Using Cerillion Billing Solution

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Cerillion Technologies has announced that Manx Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 and part of the Telefonica group, had become the first combined fixed and mobile telecommunications company in the world to gain BABT approval for its billing. BABT – British Approvals Board of Telecommunications – is the standard recognised worldwide which gives customers an assurance of accuracy in billing and pricing for telecommunications products and services.

“Gaining approval was a condition of our new Telecom license,” commented Mike Dee, Director of Finance, Manx Telecom. “Cerillion’s billing software supports all our fixed and mobile services and has played a vital role in us achieving this compliance.”

Manx Telecom worked in close co-operation with Cerillion staff to evaluate the existing billing operation, and identify and correct any areas that failed to meet the rigorous conditions laid down by the BABT Standard. By demonstrating that the bill production process achieved the high levels of accuracy and consistency required, approval was achieved in a comparatively short timeframe. [Read more…]

Telenor Pakistan Selects Interconnect System from Azure Solutions

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Azure Solutions, a revenue assurance company, announced that Telenor Pakistan is to implement Azure Interconnect version 9.0 for its GSM services. In addition, Telenor Pakistan will be upgrading its existing Azure Interconnect system for its long distance international (LDI) services.

Telenor acquired a license for providing GSM services in Pakistan in April 2004 and commercially launched services in Islamabad, Rawlpindi and Karachi in March 2005. Its GSM mobile network is now available in 286 destinations and is the fastest growing network in Pakistan. Such has been the rapid growth of the network that Telenor required an effective interconnect billing solution. [Read more…]

NuVox Communications Selects Syndesis for Convergent Service Delivery Management

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NuVox Communications, a provider of voice, data, and security services to business customers throughout the Southeast and Midwest United States, has selected Syndesis from a competitive field for a multi-phase convergent service delivery management project. NuVox has successfully deployed Syndesis® TrueSource™, the world’s most widely deployed data integrity management solution, for auto-discovery and reconciliation across its communications network. The implementation is already providing business benefits, including a more accurate view of OSS/BSS data. NuVox looks forward to realizing additional benefits in service delivery and management. A future phase of the ongoing partnership will include the implementation of Syndesis® NetProvision™ to power VoIP service delivery and other next-generation offerings at NuVox.

“Syndesis will play a critical role in streamlining our operations and ensuring the integrity of our OSS data, thereby enhancing service delivery for our customers,” said Jeff Sivori, Vice President of Technology Development for NuVox Communications.

Currently in production at NuVox, Syndesis TrueSource is powering the auto-discovery of numerous network elements and reconciling the data against inventory and provisioning databases of record. Discrepancies between the network and these databases are being corrected, resulting in improved service delivery. This, in turn, is helping NuVox to offer faster time-to-service and ensure exceptional customer service. [Read more…]

Sudatel Chooses CDMA Mediation and Provisioning Solution from Comptel Corporation

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Comptel Corporation, a convergent mediation, charging and provisioning software vendor, and Sudanese Telecom Company LTD (Sudatel), the Sudanese incumbent operator, announced today that they have signed an agreement for the delivery of Comptel EventLink® mediation solution and Comptel InstantLink® provisioning solution for Sudatel’s new CDMA network.

Mr. Osman Muktar, IT Manager for Sudatel says: “Comptel has proven to be a highly professional company and we have enjoyed working with them. We have a very aggressive roll-out schedule for our new network in which we will need Comptel’s expertise and assistance to be successful. Our mediation and provisioning layer will now be truly standardised, convergent and open – thanks to Comptel platform.”

Sudatel is currently deploying a new CDMA technology in Sudan in order to offer new services to their customers. Sudatel needed a solution to provision this new network to enable customers to enjoy those new services. Sudatel also needed to be able to collect and process usage information in order to charge customers for services used. Having previously deployed Comptel’s convergent mediation solutions for PSTN services, Sudatel decided to extend the agreement with Comptel to use not only mediation but also for provisioning for all their networks including CDMA. [Read more…]

Intec and Huawei Team Up for Convergent Mediation Solution at Taiwan 3G Operator Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless Communication APBW

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Intec Billing, a BSS/OSS software vendor for fixed, mobile and next-generation networks, and Huawei Technologies Company Limited China, have successfully implemented Intec’s carrier class multi-service Intec Mediation solution for Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless (“APBW”), a leading CDMA 2000 operator in Taiwan, within three months.

Mr. L.T. Wang, Chairman of APBW stated: “With its business logic-based configuration, the Intec mediation solution has demonstrated its capability to help a service provider to differentiate itself by accurately delivering new and innovative communication services, and by leveraging a single converged mediation platform to scale and support the needs of rapid penetration into a high-volume market. We are also very impressed by the quality of the product and delivery team and also the speed of delivery.”

Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless Communication Inc., (APBW) is Taiwan`s first third generation (3G) broadband wireless service provider. Established in November 2001, APBW won its 3G mobile operating license and successfully introduced Taiwan`s first CDMA cellular service in 2003. [Read more…]

Argent Networks Enhances Revol Wireless Network with Advanced Billing Solution

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Argent Networks, a technology and telecommunications billing solutions company, announced today that it has signed a deal with Revol to supply its in>Bill™ solution. Revol, the main brand of Cleveland Unlimited, is an Ohio-based communications provider with a rapidly growing customer base using a high-quality, all-digital wireless CDMA network. Revol’s network has spread throughout Cleveland as well as Youngstown and Columbus Ohio as well as Indianapolis, Indiana.

Chris Jones, CEO of Argent Networks, says that in>Bill™ is an advanced, web-enabled solution that provides rich and detailed information about network usage for telecommunication carriers like Revol. “Argent’s in>Bill™ will enable Revol to carry out trend and traffic analysis across every part of its network for all content from any record source. In addition, in>Bill™ monitors traffic volume, types of activity and usage right down to individual events. Being able to quickly process and re-process event data records means Revol will be better placed to ensure accuracy of billing processes issues,” says Jones.

Tony McDowell, VP Engineering & Operations for Revol says that Argent’s in>Bill™ solution was selected as the ideal platform as it provides several key advantages and features for the company’s network. [Read more…]

TeleSciences and MetaSwitch Team to Enable Seamless Billing for Blended Multimedia Services in IMS Networks

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TeleSciences, a pioneer in Mediation systems and MetaSwitch(R), a leading vendor of next-generation carrier switching and applications solutions, today announced a partnership designed to ease the transition to multiservice converged networks based on the emerging IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standard. Proven interoperability between the TeleSciences 600i Mediation Platform and MetaSwitch’s multimedia- enhanced telephony solutions enables operators of IMS networks to maximize revenues and increase customer satisfaction with accurate, blended billing across wireless, mobile and cable services.

“The ability to collect and correlate chargeable events from multiple network elements is a key aspect of the IMS architecture,” said Martin Taylor, MetaSwitch vice president of product management and technology strategy. “Our partnership with TeleSciences shows that we are responding to carriers’ needs to drive greater revenue from service innovations as they migrate to more flexible and distributed next-generation networks.”

With the introduction of multimedia-enhanced services in an IMS architecture, there is a need to acknowledge the additional sources of billing records, all of which require mediation before the records can be sent to the OSS/BSS. With its flexibility, the 600i brings the future needs of network data collection in focus. The 600i integrates easily with existing legacy networks yet fits in as a critical component of IMS networks. The 600i is capable of support for RADIUS and DIAMETER protocols, collection of SIP and QoS records and supports multiple security requirements including SSH2 and SFTP. Real-time capabilities push individual records to OSS downstream, and open APIs support today’s need for Prepaid and Interactive account control. [Read more…]

Intec Billing Announces Unaudited Results for the Six Months Ended 31 March 2006

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Intec Telecom Systems PLC (“Intec” or “the Company”), a supplier of software solutions to the global telecoms industry, announces its unaudited results for the six months ended 31 March 2006 (“H1 2006”), prepared under IFRS1. The company has demonstrated excellent organic growth resulting from solid trading across all aspects of the business, as well as good cash generation. Increased momentum, in both new business wins and sales into our existing customer base, particularly with multi-product deals, has been a feature of the period. Intec has maintained its policy of investing in both products and delivery capability to meet demand, resulting in a solid earnings performance. [Read more…]

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