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Oracle Adds New Capabilities to Billing Suite
Oracle announced new enhancements to its Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Release 7.3. The enhancements include:
- New business functions to help avoid churn, whereby Oracle customers can create more compelling and timely offers and promotions.
- A “best-pricing” feature that allows service providers to offer subscribers optimal pricing based upon usage for the billing period. This feature will also provide subscribers with on-demand best pricing calculations at any time during a billing cycle.
- Flexible “dropped call” management functionality to identify a dropped call or a continuation of a dropped call and assign specific discounts or credits.
- Dynamic discounts based upon user-defined rules such as creating dynamic friends and family discount lists and aggregating discounts for product usage over wide time ranges.
New features also include more functionality to increase system uptime and significantly reduce the possibility of system outages. Highlights include additional system intelligence and processes to increase the availability of the primary (active) and secondary (backup) Transactional In Memory Operational Store (TIMOS) servers, which are used for network grade rating and charging of real-time events; and improved load rebalancing to increase system performance when restarting system Data Manager connections.
FiberCloud Chooses OSG
OSG Billing Services announced that it will manage invoice presentment and distribution services for FiberCloud, a wholly owned subsidiary of Whidbey Telecom, which provides collocation, high-speed Internet connectivity, and other IP-enabled and related services to business customers in the Pacific Northwest.
Prior to contacting OSG Billing Services, FiberCloud conducted all billing and mailing in-house, which the company said was time-consuming and labor-intensive.
FiberCloud will also use OSG’s Dynamic Messaging product, an online application that allows users to create customized messaging and targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, FiberCloud CSRs will have access to OSG View, a support tool that provides instant access to an exact copy of the invoice.
UCN Extends With Info Directions
Info Directions announced that Utah-based service provider UCN has implemented Info Directions’ CostGuard.NET OSS/BSS and EBPP solutions to manage rating, billing, operations and customer care.
UCN provides all-in-one, off-premises contact center software. The software is delivered over the UCN network and supports both traditional TDM and VoIP connectivity models. The company implemented its first CostGuard system in 2000. “With our recent acquisitions and future plans, we felt it was important to invest in our infrastructure so we can continue to evolve,” said Scott Welch, chief operating officer. “We are already seeing significant benefits and look forward to taking full advantage of its flexibility and open architecture.”
Tekno Telecom Introduces Billing Intelligence Product
Tekno Telecom, a hardware and software manufacturer of SS7, ATM and IP network monitoring systems, introduced its latest product, Net InterConnect. The product enables carriers to gain business billing intelligence needed to perform accurate and complete intercarrier billing using information contained in SS7 ISUP CDR data.
Bandwidth.com Chooses Highdeal
Highdeal announced that Bandwidth.com has chosen Highdeal Transactive as its best-of-breed billing solution. Recently named by Inc. Magazine as the 16th fastest growing private company in the United States, Bandwidth.com provides voice and data sales initiatives to companies such as CDW, Mitel and Allworx. Bandwidth.com offers VoIP solutions including SIP trunking and hosted VoIP products, in addition to its suite of data and managed network services.
Telcordia Partners With mPortal
Telcordia and mPortal, a provider of mobile content and applications for MNOs, MVNOs, content providers and enterprises, announced a new collaboration. Telcordia has selected mPortal’s Content Delivery Manager and Content Catalog to further enhance the Telcordia Hosted Solution for MVNOs. Through this relationship, Telcordia will offer MVNOs more than 25,000 ringtones, wallpapers and games, as well dynamic content such as real-time news feeds.
Intec Convergent Billing and Mediation Selected by QUALCOMM
Intec announced that it has been selected by QUALCOMM’s Wireless Business Solutions division to provide technology for the division’s next-generation billing system. The agreement includes software and services for Intec Convergent Billing and Intec Mediation usage event pre-processing, deployed as a fully integrated mediation, rating/billing and reporting platform to initially service domestic market customers, followed by international markets in a later phase. The QUALCOMM implementation will be supported from Intec’s Regional Center of Excellence in Atlanta.
Cowlitz Upgrades CARMS Product
Cowlitz River Software, a provider of carrier access billing for small to mid-sized telecom companies, upgraded its carrier access revenue management systems (CARMS). Upgrades have taken place to the record importing procedure and now include a multitude of formats to view and print reports.
DSET Adds Web Module to Its OSS Gateways
DSET recently introduced its Web Integration Module (WIM), which integrates commonly used business services from several of its gateway products under one screen.
WIM is available for the end-to-end Voice product and Access product operations. It provides customers with a “worklist”—a simplified method of entering service orders, viewing responses and activating the next stage within an operation. The module allows seamless transfer of shared data between applications. It also allows application-specific data to be entered, either manually or via predefined templates, at each stage of the operation. WIM is installed within the current ezLocal and ezAccess gateway applications and hence will have an appearance and behavior consistent with existing applications.
FTS and Sandvine Parter
FTS and Sandvine recently partnered to offer a combined product set. The combined solution comprises the FTS Leap Business Control Engine and Sandvine’s deep packet inspection-based policy solution, which allows service providers to capture, analyze and respond to user-related events in real time and address these events from a business standpoint. For example, if a premium customer is trying to watch a VoD, the provider can dynamically improve his or her service level to guarantee a great viewing experience. Alternatively, the provider can allow customers to self-provision a “turbo speed” broadband access experience activated instantaneously and charge on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Ace Communications Group Selects CommSoft Solutions for Quad Play
CommSoft announced that Ace Communications Group has selected its suite of products to provide video, voice and data services. This solution includes all of CommSoft’s products for order processing, billing, CABS, financial reporting, provisioning, online self-care, workforce management and inventory. Ace has been a CommSoft customer since 2005 for service activation and process automation.
Comments and feedback welcome, please email Jill Morgan at jmorgan@billingworld.com.
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