Network & Billing Update Q3 2009

The ATS Network & Billing Update is published by Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc. (www.atso.com), a revenue and service assurance solutions provider. This free newsletter is a guide to telecommunications OSS, billing, and revenue assurance news and other telecom industry analysis. To unsubscribe, contribute an article, or for offbeat news, please scroll to the end. Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and co-workers!

ATS Announces Global Partnership with WeDo Technologies
By: Randall Guthrie, President, ATS

Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc and WeDo Technologies have announced a Global partnership for their core business: the Revenue Assurance market.

ATS has been a leader in Revenue Assurance in North America for the past 14 years. Their customer base includes tier 1 Carriers in the United States, Canada, and Caribbean islands as well as many tier 2 providers and other competitive carriers.

WeDo Technologies has implemented its solutions in more than 65 different countries and has offices in 12. With over 90 telecom clients worldwide, WeDo Technologies offers a very impressive financial track record and a strong shareholder base, providing the additional comfort that the market expects.

ATS’ flagship product, SimCall, is the industry’s leading tool to ensure network integrity by validating the accuracy of switch translations. SimCall is unique in that it simulates every dialing combination possible in a fraction of the time it would take to generate such calls. WeDo technologies’ Business Assurance RAID, the leading Revenue Assurance and Fraud System in the Telecommunications industry, has been implemented across the five continents and has very strong references in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Central and South America.

“We are very excited to expand into the international telecom market,” says Randall Guthrie, ATS’ President. “Ensuring network integrity and revenue optimization for our customers have always been our core strengths and we look forward to expanding these trusted partner relationships to WEDO Technologies’ clients around the world. We are already working with WEDO technologies’ technical and marketing teams to develop exciting next generation tools for carriers here in the US and abroad.”

Rui Paiva WeDo Technologies’ CEO, added: “We share Randall’s excitement. From start we felt there was a great partnering opportunity. ATS can complement WeDo Technologies’ worldwide offer and leverage our approach to the Northern American Market where we started to invest early on this year. Our clients, our teams and our products will have a lot to gain with this joint work”.

Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc. (ATS) is a market leader for telecommunications network integrity, switch automation and revenue assurance. ATS offers a wide range of telecommunication solutions through web based software applications and consulting services. The company’s SimCall tool is widely accepted as the standard for the comprehensive switch audits. Used by most of the large companies in North America and the Caribbean, SimCall has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for ATS clients by quickly analyzing the translations in the switch network. For more information, visit www.atso.com

WeDo technologies is the leading supplier of Revenue Assurance solutions for the global telecoms industry. Business Assurance RAID, the Revenue Assurance and Fraud product, has been implemented across the five continents. For more information, visit www.wedotechnologies.com

OBF #107 - Cambridge, MA
By: Ken Babcock, VP of Regulatory Services, ATS

The OBF is morphing into something that will resemble an ongoing structure of two basic committees with underlying sub-committees and ad hoc task force groups as required. This was the message that rang loud and clear at OBF # 107.

The following is an extract from presentations made prior to OBF#107 which were discussed in-depth at OBF#107.

• OBF Co-Chairs to develop proposed restructure plan to be implemented by January 1, 2010

– These two committees may be comprised of subcommittees and/or task forces as deemed necessary to progress the work of ATIS and the OBF

• In some cases based on new issues brought in to one of the committees, a task force or subcommittee will be created to further the work of the issue.

– The new structure will necessitate the election of new committee and subcommittee co-chairs with the establishment of new co-chair terms.

– Meet face-to-face 2 times per year based on the workload currently projected through 2010 (AMOC and collocated with an ATIS committee).

– Additional face-to-face meetings could be hosted by member companies if needs of committee warrant.

– Options are being explored for SNAC to move to another ATIS Committee with better synergies or become a stand-alone committee

• Focus on the development of requirements and implementation standards for inter-company billing and record exchange for the evolving packet based network as well as the traditional PSTN network.

• As part of this effort the following committees will be consolidated and the associated work activities merged into the new Billing and Record Exchange Committee:

• Focus on the development of requirements and implementation standards for inter-company ordering for the evolving packet based network as well as the traditional PSTN network.

• As part of this effort the following committees will be consolidated and the associated work activities merged into the new Ordering Solutions Committee:

Since OBF#107, an OBF Transition Team has been formed by interested participants to pursue how the new OBF structure should be implemented. Virtual meetings were held on August 25, 2009, September 3, 2009 and September 11, 2009 to work the transition planning process.

As you might imagine, all of this change is not going down smoothly for old-line OBF-types and there is definitely some resistance being exhibited but the process moves on.

On top of all of this, the struggle to lay out the ordering and billing standards for the Next Generation Network (NGN) continues to be hampered by lack of interest and focus on the realities of today’s environment of federal and state regulation of telecommunications services and the their underlying networks.

As mentioned in past articles, the Packet Technologies and Systems Committee (PTSC) which defines and maintains telecommunications signaling standards and the vendor requirements for underlying associated network infrastructure is adamant that end-to-end jurisdiction does not belong in the implementation of the NGN.

Concepts such as LATA and state pale in importance to trusted connections to carriers and/or federations of trusted carriers.

The ATIS Board and telesector management, in general, must be made aware of the fact that to let organizations such as the PTSC name the implementation tune without review could be extremely costly and wasteful if network signaling must enable end-to-end charging to be accomplished to facilitate cost recovery on an interstate vs intrastate and an interlata vs intralata basis.

The current brand of NGN signaling standards and associated requirements for hardware vendor being documented and distributed to the telecommunications industry cannot begin to adequately serve the needs of today’s marketplace which is strictly regulated.

Perhaps telecommunications industry reform will suddenly take shape and prove that the PTSC was correct in setting the direction as it has but I am doubtful to say the least.

In terms of the OBF, the jury is still out on whether it will rise again or vanish.

As Revenue and Margins Grow More Precious, So Does the Revenue Assurance Space

Some got their start in fraud management, some in invoice reconciliation. Some began life in CABS and some by managing credit risk or some other niche that could uncover a bit of lost revenue. But little by little vendors in market segments that came to be known as revenue assurance and cost management began to branch out and merge. It was risky. For some it was costly. Then the recession hit. And the industry got a wake-up call.

Today, revenue assurance has assumed the role as the umbrella term for a range of solutions and has become one of the few segments in the telecom software arena enjoying healthy growth. However, a term suggested last year by Analysys Mason analyst Larry Goldman seems increasingly more appropriate given the way this segment has evolved. He calls it “business optimization.”

In Goldman’s book, business optimization includes revenue assurance, fraud prevention, cost management, credit risk management, data retention and business intelligence. And rather than remain the niche players they were, companies in this space seem to want to do it all.

“Companies are putting more pieces together so the distinct area of revenue assurance is growing and changing,” Goldman said.

That’s due in part to a change in mindset by some service providers. “We see carriers who haven’t worried about revenue assurance in the past, such as those in emerging markets, now very interested,” Goldman said.

He said service providers tend to get more serious about revenue assurance when they are making significant changes in the business, forming a new operation or getting into a new line of business. “New things are happening so rapidly now that you are always introducing things into the system that can cause revenue assurance problems

Offbeat News: BBC's Tomorrow's World Demonstrates Experimental Mobile Phone in 1979
Courtesy of Cellular News

The UK's iconic television show, Tomorrow's World has put a selective archive of its stories online on the BBC website, including a news item about an experimental mobile phone system being developed in 1979.

In this report from a longer program, Michael Rodd examines a British prototype for a cordless telephone that allows the user to make calls from anywhere. Also included at the end of this item is a rather nice out-take as Rodd also experiences the first mobile wrong number.

The same year that this program aired, NTT launched the earliest commercial mobile phone network in Japan, with northern Europe getting its first network by 1981.

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