Alltel Information Services went shopping for a mediation partner for its massive automated messaging accounting project, rather than build its own mediation system. Although a company official hinted in September 1998 that Alltel might build the mediation system itself, the company decided to find a partner to handle that part of the project.
“Probably it came down to a decision about how quickly can we develop it, how much is it going to cost to do it ourselves, versus partnering with somebody else,” says Lon J. Zanetta, CIO for Alltel Communications, who was not at Alltel when the decision was made. “And certainly we partner with external providers on a number of software platforms where we choose, for whatever reason—it doesn’t make sense for us to write one of our own, we couldn’t get there fast enough, we couldn’t necessarily do it at the same economic profile. We make those kinds of decisions all the time.”
AIS and its eventual partner, Lucent Technologies, accomplished a long and difficult modernization project that included upgrading hardware and software, installing new switches and coordinating with various carriers to complete the project. And those were the least of their challenges.
The modernization of its AMA polling platforms now lets the billing provider combine wireless and wireline customer information upstream from the billing platform for the first time. The improvements, which included replacing and upgrading myriad switches and protocols around the Lucent BillDats Data Manager system, lets AIS provide a single bill for its parent company, Alltel Communications, and other carriers for which AIS provides billing services. Single bills are now available in 25 of Alltel’s 31 markets, including Jacksonville, Fla., Little Rock, Ark., and Charlotte, N.C., says Alltel spokeswoman Susan Rogers.
In AMA polling, customer data records are collected from equipment such as central office switches, and can be collected directly from other sources such as Internet services and voice messaging systems, and combined for distribution to downstream systems. The new system should streamline the collection and distribution of the wireline and wireless billing data, lower operating costs and increase efficiency, Alltel officials say.
Using the new AMA network configuration, AIS can combine polling upstream at 200 sites throughout almost all of its market, which includes the Northeast, Southeast, New Mexico and Las Vegas. The Data Manager software enables AIS to collect and transport subscriber usage information across platforms.
The Alltel team, headed by Brian Wimer, collaborated with Brad Fowler of Lucent’s Billing Systems Management team. The Alltel/Lucent team set out to accomplish several goals:
? Eliminate dial-up costs by migrating from the long-distance DDD network to Alltel’s advanced packet network. “We had older polling systems,” Wimer says. “All were being upgraded to newer platforms for Y2K, new protocols. The goal was to get off the old platforms and onto the new.”
? Support an increasingly diverse network, including multiple switch vendors and multiple services, mediation of diverse records, and multiple feeds to a variety of downstream systems such as billing, fraud and trending.
? Create a single converged system with disaster recovery support engineered into the system.
? Build direct mainframe connectivity with Sterling Software Inc.’s Connect:Direct, Alltel’s standard method of communicating with downstream systems. The input and output interface supports TCP/IP communication among mainframe, mini- and microcomputers.
? Integrate the platforms with Alltel’s standard operating environment. This required integration of the Sun Microsystems Inc. Enterprise 6000 hardware platform with Alltel’s embedded EMC2 disk array architecture and Veritas Software Corp.’s file management software.
? Increase cost savings immediately and greatly enhance the quality of transmission.
The Alltel/Lucent team had to overcome several potentially critical network hurdles to accomplish the upgrade, says Wimer, senior WAN engineer for Alltel’s data network. For example, Alltel was paying excessive monthly long-distance network charges to teleprocess AMA data, because the carrier was using an old modem bank, dialing out to remote switches with A-39 callback units for network security. The DDD network sent a two-wire dial-up call out to the remote device, including an automated number for callback. “The unit would blend the two [out and return] into a four-wire return for the duration of the polling system,” Wimer says. “We used a whole variety of modem types and protocols.”
Alltel also had to coordinate the migration of a packet network with a variety of switch vendors, each with different hardware and network configurations. “We had to get the BX-25 protocol to work on our packet network, had to work with the different vendor network operation centers to explain to them what we wanted to do,” Wimer says. “None of the switch manufacturers’ customers was using a packet network to interconnect their billing media collectors.
“We had to talk to Siemens about their switches to explain what we were doing, to determine how we could configure their systems to be compatible with our systems to transport data. None of their customers were doing connectivity this way, point-to-point or dedicated access to their switches.”
To relieve pressure from the volumes of AMA records in the teleprocessing pipeline, Alltel installed new switches, including Nortel DMS-500s, DMS-250s, DMS 100s, and DMS 10s, and Lucent Autoplex cell switches and 5ESS. They also moved network operations from two polling centers—in Matthews, N.C., and Hudson, Ohio—to AIS sites. “We took the network engineering functionalities out of those centers. The data center operations of both of those platforms are now out of Little Rock.”
Data Manager has filter and format-specialized processing modules that can perform full mediation of records even during a site disaster, says BillDats product manager Dennis O’Neill. The packet network was engineered so that each switch could be polled from either location. “Basically, if we have a primary polling location and a secondary polling location, we do a 50-50 split,” Wimer says. “If one of the platforms goes down—say, someone hits it with a forklift—we could swing all the network connections to the other polling sites in about an hour. Within an hour, we can be in total production on the other platform.
“For the cellular side, because it’s point-to-point, all we have to do is make remote modifications to point them in another direction and route to Twinsburg, Ohio. If we have to upgrade one of the platforms to a new software platform, we can plan an outage and have the other platform pick up the load.” It also uses disk array for additional storage, and permits remote access support so technicians can troubleshoot without going to the polling sites.
Almost 200 wireline and wireless switches were to be converted within a year and electronically linked to the Alltel billing and fraud platforms via Data Manager. Data Manager collects call record data from a carrier’s network—regardless of the brand of switch a carrier uses—or delivers the call record information to multiple locations within the carrier’s business, including the billing systems that generate the bills. Downstream applications can use the data to detect fraudulent telephone use, identify service issues and facilitate network planning. The carrier’s marketing organization can use customer-specific usage information to tailor service packages and generate new revenue. The usage information includes a customer’s wireless, wireline or long-distance calling habits, “ring, no-answers” that last longer than a minute; and the most commonly called area codes from cities like Atlanta, Wimer says. The packet switch interface supports polling network elements over switched virtual circuit connections via a packet-switched digital network, O’Neill says.
The first central offices were cut on schedule, and additional sites quickly followed. By November 1998 technicians had converted all of Alltel’s wireline central offices; by January 1999 they finished connecting the wireless switches to the network; and they tested the switches and had them up by the end of February.
“We originally planned to cut three or four offices per week,” Wimer says. “That quickly changed to six or eight a week.”
Data Manager has allowed Alltel to leverage the capabilities of its Nortel DPN-100 network. The network eliminates more than 90 percent of Alltel’s dial-out costs and provides routing for its disaster recovery plan. “From the BillDats platform we have all the network elements and billing elements duplicated on both platforms,” Wimer says.
The Alltel/Lucent team also wanted to improve storage capacity so the system could handle more data. Disk storage determines how much data the billing media collectors out in the field can retain. “The more often you can pull a switch, the more you can keep the number of days of retention down to a minimum,” Wimer says. Technicians installed EMC2’s disk array architecture and Veritas’ file management software. To expand storage, technicians simply add more disk arrays. “With EMC they simply plug in another unit, and map it in live. It’s a completely mirrored disk. We’re focusing four ultrawide SCSI disks for multi-pathing across SCSI interfaces for even more speed in the transmission to the storage arrays, along with disaster recovery functionality,” Wimer says.
The billing system still handles a few of its traditional roles. Although the AMA platform handles inventory of event call types, the billing system still handles cross-product discounting and re-rating, and receivables. Both the AMA platform and the billing software can flag duplicate message events to prevent billing mistakes, Wimer says. Spokeswoman Rogers would not say how much the upgrade cost, but the improvements have saved Alltel about $250,000 a month. “The cost of the system depends on what you want to do,” Wimer says. “For instance, if one customer only had one switch type, and no disaster recovery like we did, the cost would be less.”
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