ACE*COMM's Service Provider Customer and Partner Newsletter
Vol. 4, No. 1 ¤ June 2005 ¤ Service Provider Edition
[Enterprise Customers go here.]
ACE*COMM Acquires UK-based 2helix
Expands Asset and Network Revenue Assurance Solutions Portfolio
ACE*COMM recently acquired London-based 2helix, an innovative provider of network asset assurance, revenue optimization, and business intelligence solutions. Founded in 1999, 2helix has grown rapidly and gained recognition for its network asset assurance solutions for the Tier 1 carrier market. In 2004, 2helix was ranked as one of the 25 fastest growing companies by the UK Sunday Times Tech Track review. Recently, the ACE*COMM 2helix solutions were selected for network revenue assurance projects at a leading Scandinavian mobile, fixed, and data services operator, a UK broadband communications provider, and a Mediterranean full-spectrum telecoms operator.
We believe that the combination of ACE*COMM and 2helix makes sense for our customers from many perspectives. Our mutual skills, technologies, and product categories are highly complementary, and will enable us to enhance both companies’ offerings to make a positive impact on our customers' bottom-line. 2helix's expertise focuses on network asset and data quality assurance, data migration, and in the visualization of integrated network, geographic and sales/marketing data. Together with ACE*COMM's convergent mediation-based revenue assurance capabilities, our joint expertise and offerings create a compelling value proposition for carriers and operators seeking comprehensive solutions.
Some of the ways we can deliver a significant return on investment include:
Accurate Billing
Uncover discrepancies between potential and actual billed revenue
Account for all services provided: pre-paid, post-paid, recurring monthly charges, value-added services, etc.
Analyze root causes of revenue leakage to understand what needs to be fixed to prevent recurrence
Turn unrealized potential revenue into actual billable revenue—changing revenue loss into revenue recovery
Asset Reclamation and Optimization
Maximize the revenue potential of underutilized resources
Discover, identify, and register the entire asset base
Gain control of network and asset usage, freeing up resources for additional revenue generation
Increase revenue-generation capacity of every network asset by analyzing and optimizing its usage
Improved Margins
Include margin management as part of the revenue assurance mindset
Make the network work harder—delivering more revenue with the same assets
Deliver extra revenue by evolving the revenue assurance process and enabling the business to sell from a margin-optimized position
Ask us about how we:
Helped a Tier 1 European operator recover an additional US$23 million of revenue in less than 12 months!
Found $35 million in under-billing for a European operator.
Uncovered $42 million of unused network capacity for a UK carrier.
Reclaimed an untapped market potential of $170 million per year in subscriber revenues for a Tier 1 carrier.
Dan Baker, Research Director at Dittberner, had this to say about 2helix in the June 2005 Telecom Revenue Assurance & Cost Management Solutions report:
"2helix is a small, but highly capable shop that's winning significant revenue assurance business in Europe, specializing in network facing audits and related software. It's most impressive success story is helping a large telco avoid a capital expenditure of $95 million. ... we also like 2helix's Network Visualization product, a network planning and optimization solution. It allows an operator to display physical network in relation to existing customers, prospective customers, network infrastructure, and spare capacity. This should be a highly desireable product for wireline telcos targeting households and businesses because it makes it easier to understand the physical location and status of existing and churned customers, facilitating smarter sales and marketing efforts."
For more information on our 2helix solutions, contact Nancy Horn at +1 301-721-3064 or ,
ACE*COMM Launches New Wireless Application—Parent Patrol™—and Announces First Install
ACE*COMM recently announced the availability of our new Parent Patrol™ wireless applications followed by its first deployment in an end-user environment. Parent Patrol™ is our new wireless network access control feature built on the ACE*COMM Convergent Mediation™ SDP (service delivery platform). The customer is a leading Latin American wireless GSM provider.
"While we are not the first-to-market for this type of subscriber service, we believe we are the first to implement the service in a live customer environment," said Chris Couch, Senior Vice President and CMO of ACE*COMM. "This service provider was quick to recognize the commercial potential of Parent Patrol™. Mobile phone users are getting younger and younger, but questions are being raised about the appropriateness of offering unlimited mobile phone access to children. Parent Patrol™ not only allows service providers to zero-in on the growing market for family-wide usage arrangements, but goes farther by breaking through the barriers of usage uncertainty. It targets those parents who want the security of mobile phones for their kids without the worries."
More and more, parents are providing their children with mobile phones for safety and security. But many parents want to place limits on how those phones are used. Our Parent Patrol™ lets subscribers define limits and restrictions on the mobile phones included in their family plan service bundle. Parent Patrol™ is inexpensive to operate because it puts control in the hands of subscribers—they log in and set the rules themselves, over the Web. It can be used with both prepaid and post-paid billing arrangements without additional hardware or software.
About Parent Patrol™ and Convergent Mediation™ SDP
Convergent Mediation™ SDP is a new service delivery platform that builds on ACE*COMM’s extensive experience in the field of network data mediation. It is a reliable and flexible platform for the rapid and profitable delivery of value-added services to subscribers in a highly scalable way. Convergent Mediation™ SDP consolidates core service delivery OSS functions at the network’s edge, where they benefit the service provider the most.
ACE*COMM has developed a number of real-time services that are optimized for Convergent Mediation™ SDP. Parent Patrol™, ACE*COMM PrePay, and Fixed/Mobile Convergence deliver new ways for operator’s customers to take advantage of their network service plans. And, because these services come packaged with Convergent Mediation™ SDP, the path is cleared for operators to quickly deliver hundreds of other brand-defining and revenue-generating services. That means they can pick and choose the services they want, and deliver them via ACE*COMM’s time- and field-proven Convergent Mediation™ platform.
For more information on our 2helix solutions, contact Nancy Horn at +1 301-721-3064 or ,
Alcatel Selects ACE*COMM as IP Mediation Partner
Enriches IP/Ethernet portfolio with critical service assurance features and expands OSS Partner Program
Alcatel recently announced enhancements to its 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) and the certification of Independent Software Vendors and products including InfoVista, Micromuse, ACE*COMM, and the EMC Smarts InCharge suite as part of the Alcatel OSS Partner Program. As a result, carriers worldwide can better meet customer expectations by combining and leveraging Alcatel's industry leading Operation, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAM&P) features for IP and Ethernet services with carrier-grade service assurance solutions from best-of-breed OSS vendors, selected for their proven ability to provide mission-critical applications to Tier one carriers around the world.
Leveraging the OSS interface enhancements to the SAM portfolio and "Plug-and-Play" pre-integration with OSS partner products, carriers can realize clear and rapid benefits to their IP/Ethernet service offerings. For example, they are able to reduce the mean-time-to-repair and service impact of network problems by using root-cause analysis features, automated fault correlation, advanced mediation and sophisticated monitoring capabilities for network performance and revenue assurance. These enhancements allow the network operator to quickly identify and report network and service degradation as well as identify opportunities for revenue recovery and overall cost reduction.
We are pleased to report that once again the auditor recommended our ISO 9001 certificate be renewed.
Industry News & Trends
Service Delivery Platforms Offer Long-Term Hope to Telecom Carriers, New Report Finds
Service delivery platforms (SDPs) are emerging as a critical enabling technology for both wireline and wireless telecom carriers to deliver next-gen services profitably, reducing the costs and time needed to acquire, provision, maintain, and deliver services, according to a new report from Light Reading Insider, the paid research division of Light Reading Inc.
"Service Delivery Platforms: The Next Grand Design?" analyzes the emerging SDP sector by defining exactly what SDPs are and what they do, detailing why SDPs are essential to carriers' long-term plans.
Next-generation telecom services will include potentially thousands of services, many of which will be delivered by third-party service developers, notes Caroline Chappell, the author of the report. "Service providers need to make it easy for third-party developers to plug new services into their networks, but they must also ensure that they aren't disintermediated by those developers," she adds.
But while service providers are attracted by the price proposition of micro multi-service provisioning platforms (MSPPs), those surveyed by Light Reading Insider say they also want to make sure that these products will be able to deliver the quality and reliability needed to keep customers happy.
Key findings of the report include:
The imminent arrival of next-gen telecom services will force service providers to adapt to new revenue-generation models based on offering hundreds of different services, and SDPs offer the most logical means to manage and control all of those services efficiently and profitably.
DoCoMo's i-mode service is widely viewed as the first-generation model for effective service delivery platforms.
SDPs will help carriers to make money off third-party services without risking customer disintermediation.
The international telecommunications industry is in the early stages of a migration to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), reports In-Stat. The big question is when will a mass migration to VoIP occur? 2005-2009 is the consumer and small business VoIP ramp-up period, and migration to VoIP will peak in the 2010-2014 time frame, the high tech market research firm says. This time frame is largely dependent on carriers' strategies for migration to the Next-Generation Network (NGN).
A carrier's NGN migration strategy is heavily influenced by factors such as the cost of maintaining the Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN), available investment funds, technology, regulatory policies, pricing trends and competition. Each carrier will develop it's own unique NGN migration strategy.
Carriers around the world are developing migration strategies that include network optimization, next-generation overlays and PSTN replacement. These strategies will directly impact the type, quantity and timing of future equipment purchases. In-Stat has concluded that as VoIP competition and demand increases over the next five years, incumbent carriers will increasingly opt for PSTN replacement to lower operating costs.
Mediation Systems Halt Revenue Leakage
By John L. Guerra - April, 2005
The role modern mediation systems can play in managing telecom networks is ever-expanding; where they once simply aligned services with the customers who ordered them or worked as an adjunct to inventory systems, mediation systems are being used as an important revenue assurance tool.
Revenue Assurance Market to Reach $432 million in 2008
Market’s Future Tied to Next Generation Services Arrival
Bethesda, MD, March 28, 2005 -- According to Dittberner Associates Inc., newest research the worldwide revenue assurance/cost management market will grow to US$432 million in 2008, from an estimated $396 million dollars in 2004.
The revenue assurance function sits halfway between a carrier’s OSS/BSS systems and its internal audit department. Rather than reconcile the accounting books, revenue assurance worries about the accuracy and effectiveness of customer- and network- facing systems like billing, mediation, provisioning, collections, and interconnect settlement.
A healthy revenue assurance software and consulting market emerged shortly after the telecom recession hit. Unbridled network expansion during the dotcom years led to widespread data integrity problems and careless operational processes. Thus, revenue assurance systems proved a perfect antidote for the times, helping telcos plug revenue leaks, clean up error-prone inventories, and boost bottom lines without spending new money on networks or marketing.
While the revenue assurance market growth has recently flattened as vendors have either left the scene or been swallowed up by competitors, Dittberner foresees good years ahead, especially as next generation networks (NGN) arrive.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” says Dan Baker, Dittberner’s director of OSS/BSS research. “A temporary need for Sarbanes-Oxley solutions kept the market out of the doldrums in 2004. In a couple of years we see the market climbing again as telcos seek help assuring their new VoIP, 3G wireless, and fixed/mobile convergence networks,” he adds.
According to Dittberner, the NGN challenge is two-fold. First, the number of services, inter-carrier agreements, and content partners in an NGN network could expand one hundred-fold, making NGN all the harder to audit. Second, NGN takes telecoms out of the familiar, slower-paced circuit-based world and into real-time 3G and IP environments that require highly sophisticated audit controls.
Dittberner predicts strongest growth will occur in the interconnect billing, wireless billing, and corporate contract audit segments that will capture than half the market in 2008 (see figure, below).
CCMI Revenue Assurance
July 18-19, 2005, Miami, FL ACE*COMM CMO Chris Couch will speak on "Data Mining for Next-generation Services"
Push-to-Talk Australia 2005
July 27-28, 2005, Sydney, Australia ACE*COMM Director of Product Architecture Jonjie Sena wil speak on "Implementing PTT Services - Interoperability and Technology Compatibility"
"The facts indicate that wireless operators had better pay more attention to their revenue assurance practices, if they hope to stem the flow of
revenue fleeing their networks."
Hours: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM U.S. EST
Weekdays, except for ACE*COMM-observed holidays. After-hours calls are handled by the ACE*COMM answering service.
Contact Customer Support:
+1 800-989-5566
+1 301-721-HELP (4357)
Escalation Path:
(1) Customer Support
(2) ,
Director of Customer Service
(+1 301-721-3089)
(3) ,
VP of Customer Care
(+1 301-721-3031)
About ACE*News
ACE*News is a publication for ACE*COMM customers and
partners. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions on how we
can improve this publication, please contact:
Editor
+1 514-843-7700
To subscribe:
(Subject: "Subscribe ACE*News Service Providers")
To unsubscribe:
(Subject: "Unsubscribe ACE*News Service Providers")
On May 23 - 26, 2005, ACE*COMM went through its tri-annual ISO audit, performed by our registrar, 
