ACE*COMM Announces Next-Gen Service Delivery Platform
ACE*COMM made a significant announcement at the IIR Next Generation Billing Systems and Processes 2004 Conference in Nice, France, with the introduction of its Convergent Mediation™ SDP (service delivery platform) on December 7.
Convergent Mediation™ SDP is an innovative approach that enables operators and service providers to deliver new mobile and data services to their subscribers, competitively and profitably. "Convergent Mediation™ SDP builds on our unrivalled experience in the mediation space to offer a reliable and flexible platform to address our customers' needs for the rapid and profitable delivery of next-generation services to their subscribers," said Chris Couch, ACE*COMM's Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. "Convergent Mediation™ SDP is a major, logical step forward for us in terms of our product road map. It supports the delivery of value-add services in a massively scalable way. By consolidating core service delivery OSS functions at the network's edge – the space where mediation is currently dominant – we enable carriers to define and launch more revenue-producing services faster, with less disruption, and with minimal incremental cost."
Convergent Mediation™ SDP reflects our commitment to lead by responding to changes in the market and by listening to our customers' needs. Studies show marked growth rates in the adoption of next-generation services such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP), mobile email, text and picture messaging, ringtone and game downloads, and location-based services. This will be a significant source of revenue for operators and service providers who are prepared to deal with the complexities of managing a per-transaction, user-centered approach to service delivery and billing.
Challenges to operators and service providers include: event management in real time; rating and settlement of microcharges; real-time provisioning; managing pre- and post-paid services on a single account; real-time fraud control; the flexibility to roll out new services quickly and profitably, and the ability to extract the subscriber information that lets them make smart marketing decisions, fast.
ACE*COMM's Convergent Mediation™ SDP meets these challenges. It ensures accurate billing and intercarrier/partner settlements, real-time rating and charging for pre- and post-paid, proven revenue assurance, and rapid rollout and delivery time – on virtually any kind of service,
network, and configuration environment.
Look for these key capabilities in Convergent Mediation™ SDP:
Real-time Event Management and Service Logic Execution
Real-time Provisioning
Converged Pre- and Post-paid Voice and Data Services
Real-time Rating and Balance Management
Supplemental Subscriber Information Management
Real-time Credit Checking
Highly Flexible and Configurable Framework
Convergent Mediation™ SDP is scheduled for delivery during the first quarter of 2005. For more information:
ViewBill Installed in Nepal
In July 2004 ACE*COMM implemented its ViewBill version 3 electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) solution for Nepal Telecom (NTC) in Kathmandu. EBPP solutions enable bills to be created, delivered, and paid over the Internet.
"ViewBill is seen by NTC as a key component of their customer relationship management efforts," said Iain Wilson, Vice President of Professional Services for ACE*COMM Solutions in Edinburgh, Scotland. "Sending and receiving telephone bills was an unwieldy and inefficient process for NTC. With ViewBill, NTC customers can review billing details online prior to payment, as well as obtain insights into call patterns and details of call activity. This capability provides a significant improvement over previous methods, in terms of information flow, receivables collection and cost control, particularly for NTC's corporate customers."
The EBPP market is on track to grow significantly, both within the U.S. and around the world. It is expected to become an increasingly attractive alternative as fixed and mobile operators continue to search for ways to reduce operating costs and to provide interactive services. According to independent technology research firm, Forrester, in the next five years, the EBPP market will grow by 80 percent.
ViewBill extends ACE*COMM's OSS offerings for Tier-2 and Tier-3 operators. It is a comprehensive multilevel EBPP product for managing billing accounts, and can dramatically improve interactive self-care. ViewBill gives customers direct control over a full range of account-related tasks, from finding information to executing transactions.
ACE*COMM Expands Footprint in India with New Broadband Data Mediation Project
ACE*COMM has completed the first installation in India of its N*USAGE® broadband data mediation technology. VSNL, a leading Indian carrier with growing broadband capacity, will employ N*USAGE® to measure network activity by subscribers, and to convert the measurements into revenue-producing records for their billing system.
N*USAGE® enables usage-sensitive billing for service providers who operate broadband data networks, including next-generation and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) networks. N*USAGE® is a high-performance billing mediation solution that collects revenue accounting and statistical information from networks. Information can be used for a range of functions including auditing and fraud management. It can be augmented with data from other systems to create composite information that can further be aggregated or correlated with transaction data from other networks or services to enable the operations and business processes for any carrier.
ACE*COMM in Bangladesh
ACE*COMM will supply a comprehensive set of OSS applications to support the operations of a new GSM mobile network being implemented by the Bangladesh Telegraph & Telephone Board (BTTB). Huawei, the leading Chinese telecommunications vendor, was awarded elements of the network contract and selected ACE*COMM to provide the required OSS components. These include customer care, billing, advanced mediation, electronic bill presentment (EBP), inter-carrier settlements, and systems integration services.
"Our strategy of marketing a complete and interoperable set of OSS products for Tier-2 and 3 operators has some resonance in the marketplace." said ACE*COMM CEO George Jimenez. "We were able to present to Huawei a robust solution that will enable BTTB to efficiently implement and operate their back-office systems."
The BTTB solution encompasses these ACE*COMM products:
JBill is designed to meet convergent billing and customer care business needs, and offers support from wireline to wireless, IP to VoIP, paging to satellite, and personalized customer care to Web self-care. Operators can bill multiple products, services, and events, at different rates and can put them all on a single bill.
ViewBill is a comprehensive multilevel EBPP product for managing billing accounts.
N*VISION® is the real-time data management and specialized network-usage data warehousing platform for ACE*COMM's Convergent Mediation™ solutions. N*VISION® includes the environment and software tools to process, store, and distribute records for OSS/BSS operations, settlements and decision-making. Real-time and historical usage records are stored in both detailed and summarized formats, along with statistics, reference tables, and more.
Mobile and VoIP to Spearhead Growth: Dittberner
According to Bethesda, Maryland-based research firm Dittberner Associates Inc., the worldwide market for mediation software and services will grow to $1.25 billion in 2009, up from an estimated $824 million in 2004.
Dan Baker, Dittberner's OSS/BSS Knowledgebase™ director, says the adoption of next-generation network services such as VoIP and 3G mobile has injected new energy into the mediation market, citing the following factors:
The rise of a new class of VoIP service providers such as Vonage and AOL
Traditional carriers upgrading their mediation systems to handle softswitch rollout
The need for highly flexible, scalable, and real-time-based mediation platforms to enable and control advanced 2.5G and 3G mobile services.
According to Baker, "Having a good mediation tool is still vital, but the big differentiator today is operating experience. The best vendors are those who can scale their platforms to millions of subscribers and manage the thousands of business rules and exceptions that live in an advanced IP or 3G network."
The graph below shows the expected mediation market breakout for 2009. The fastest growth will come from two segments: real-time packet usage (associated with video and VoIP) and 2.5 and 3G mobile usage.
For more information, visit Dittberner's Web site or contact
Mediated Reality
OSS Translation Systems Take on Content By Tara Seals
[Excerpt from Phone+ Magazine]
As the whirlwind race for the presidency showed us, we are highly dependent on the media as our link to the world; these days, whistle-stop tours don't come through most towns. Similarly, mediation systems are a key informational link to what's happening in carrier networks. And just as journalism has evolved from “reporting what happened” to setting the agenda for public opinion, mediation is evolving from simple data collection to service-enablement for IP communications and content services.
Mediation has become much more than a way to turn raw switch information into usable data for billing purposes. Over time, that basic translation function has evolved into the aggregation and automation of network information for backoffice systems, pre-billing error correction and, with the advent of IP services, the collection of information from a variety of networks using many protocols. Finally, active mediation — real-time record processing when a user interacts with a service rather than after the event — has become the standard for tackling convergent networks.
With so many year-end holidays and celebrations happening around
the world, ACE*COMM extends its Season's Greetings to all of our customers and friends, along with best wishes for a
happy and prosperous 2005!
Go to the "Press Coverage" page to see what is being said about us in the media!
Upcoming Events
Visit ACE*COMM at these upcoming events!
IIR Next Generation Billing Systems and Processes 2004
December 6-9, 2004
Radisson SAS Hotel, Nice, France Chris Couch, ACE*COMM Senior Vice President & CMO will present Overcoming the Challenges of Billing Mediation and Next Generation Service Delivery on Thursday, December 9 at 9:00 A.M. in the "Mediation and Rating" session.
2005 IOC Wireless Symposium
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas, Scottsdale, AZ Chris Couch, ACE*COMM Senior Vice President & CMO will present Implementing New Services: PTT.
VoiceCon 2005
February 7-10, 2005
Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel,
Orlando, FL
Feature Quote
"For VoIP, the revenue assurance model will have to be network-to-bill. Network elements, which are scattered all over the place, will feed call control packets to application manager servers, which will provide QoS requirements; then on to policy servers, which will provide authorization information; and all of this usage will go to a next-generation mediation system, rating engine, and then finally to a billing system."
Dr. Jerry Lucas, Telestrategies, November 2004; "Top 10 Revenue Assurance Problems with VoIP"
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ACE*COMM made a significant announcement at the IIR Next Generation Billing Systems and Processes 2004 Conference in Nice, France, with the introduction of its Convergent Mediation™ SDP (service delivery platform) on December 7.
