Bill & Charge

05 September, 2019

Shock as survey shows customers see operators as digital service providers

Reports of telecoms operators enduring a lingering decline to become commoditised infrastructure providers may have been exaggerated if the results of a new survey of mobile operators’ customers can be extrapolated. For once, the survey, commissioned by Openet, presents positive news for operators. It says that customers are increasingly willing to buy digital services from operators and are looking to them for digital innovation. George Malim reports from Dublin, Ireland.

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28 August, 2019

Inside Swisscom’s mainframe replacement project

Mainframe replacement is a phrase that turns the blood to ice in the veins of most telecoms IT professionals but these ambitious projects are starting to happen with greater regularity as mainframes reach their fourth – and sometimes fifth – decade of operation and the cost of operating them starts outstrip the risk associated with replacement. VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim recently interviewed Markus Tschumper, the head of general IT services at Swisscom, to learn about the communications service provider’s recent migration of traditional mainframe workloads to the cloud, running on a software defined mainframe from LzLabs.

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29 July, 2019

Unitymedia drives value from big data analytics

As communications service providers (CSPs) rise to the challenge of generating value from their big data analytics, Philipp Gröne, a senior delivery expert at Unitymedia, explains how the German service provider has uncovered real cash from its deployment of Guavus big data analytics – an estimated seven-digit euro sum annually in opex savings and a nearly one point increase in overall net promoter score (NPS). (more…)

19 July, 2019

Volaris acquires MDS Global to add to telecoms software portfolio

BSS provider MDS Global has been acquired by Volaris Group, the operating group of Constellation Software, in a twelfth acquisition by the company in the Communications and Media vertical.

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30 May, 2019

Executives and IT must collaborate to define 5G business cases, says Deutsche Telekom’s Meijer

With 5G at the centre of mobile operators’ strategies, the challenge is to avoid another cycle of intense infrastructure investment which enables the business cases of other organisations. Instead, operators need to take up a new role that monetises the enablement they provide and places them in the connected ecosystem as more than the providers of connectivity.

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01 May, 2019

Oz-based Hansen Tech snaps up Sigma to build create-sell-deliver software for telcos, media and high-tech companies

Global provider of catalogue-driven software, Sigma Systems, announced today that it is being acquired by Hansen Technologies for an undisclosed sum. Hansen is a specialist in billing, data management and customer care solutions for the energy, water, pay-TV, and telecommunications industries. (more…)

12 March, 2019

DSP chooses Netcracker to aid CSP transformation

Yes, the headline is the right way around.

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11 October, 2018

CSPs still missing out on billing communications blackspot finds BriteBill survey

Although only 40% of communications service provider (CSP) customers look at their bills regularly this still presents millions of customers for most providers and this channel of communication is not being maximised, writes George Malim. Billing communications remain a neglected channel according to a recent survey of 40 CSPs across EMEA, North America and Asia conducted by Omnisperience on behalf of BriteBill.

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14 September, 2018

AI is already delivering savings in the fight against fraud

Every business today is facing a host of new threats in the communications world. Telecoms service providers are no different, and the growing challenge that is VoIP and toll fraud is now estimated to cost £25.5bn globally; more than double that of credit card fraud, writes Carl Boraman, the director of strategic alliances and Tollring.

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10 September, 2018

This is how the power balance between MNOs and MVNOs has to look

[Sponsored] MVNOs [Mobile Virtual Network Operators] have been significant market players in the mobile telecommunications markets for almost two decades. They represent between 10% to 40% of the total mobile market, in various countries, where MVNOs are established for more than a decade. (more…)