Revenue assurance through stability testing at Magyar Telekom demonstrates how this task can be transformed from a one time job to a regular, efficient and controlled process, achieving:

Furthermore, the project enabled Magyar Telekom to operate, further develop and extend a pro-active process in order to continuously assure maximal revenue and efficiency.

The great achievement of the innovative approach is that revenue assurance has lost its event-driven character and become an efficient, repeatable, daily routine. The process-based approach ensures that even the smallest problem is detected in time. Thanks to the continuous control, the aggregation of problems and domino effects are avoided. Revenue leakages are identified and solved efficiently.

A common problem regarding billing system testing, validation and auditing is that the coverage is not sufficient. And increasing it requires enormous resources and reusability is not solved. Problems are mainly concentrated in the execution and evaluation phase: test execution is never perfect. Failed and repeated calls, imperfect timing and unsatisfactory call identification make testing both a difficult and involved task. All the problems noted at test execution roll over to evaluation. As a whole, there are two critical points: the production of test data and the evaluation of the results. Neither of them has been fully automated previously.

A fashionable methodology is coming into play and provides the solution for the problems above: stability testing.

Stability testing for call detail record processing is based on a representative test record set that is actualized and submitted to the rating system for each test run. In this case evaluation means the comparison of the recent and previous results. Only the differences are investigated - errors are corrected, foreseen changes are approved and consequently reference results are updated. Therefore, maximal efficiency of test evaluation is assured.

Summing up, operators have to prove the accuracy of their systems. But the methods and tools applied must be at least as reliable as the system itself. Therefore, it is a huge responsibility and challenge for suppliers of billing support systems to prove the compliance of their products and services. This very objective is supported by the BABT attested CeDaR ensuring the acceptance of CeDaR-based testing and auditing processes by regulatory bodies and other authorities both in Hungary and abroad.

ALLROUND completed installation of its TAP2-TAP3 Converter at Orange Jordan (former MobileCom). According to the company's statement:

“ ... MobileCom have successfully installed through ALLROUND TAP3 ‘Transfer Account Procedure V3.10’ Application. This Application is a requirement to complete and support the GPRS roaming service – which MobileCom has recently added to its services – enabling electronic data exchange format between roaming partners according to GSM association standards.“

Mr. Amer Sunna, Chief Information Officer of Orange Jordan (former: MobileCom) stated: “Now with the solution and support of ALLROUND, this Application shall allow us to perform and provide our customers with the best services, either here in Jordan or abroad.“

Orange Jordan is a Jordanian public mobile telephone network operator. The company's services are built on a new, highly advanced, mobile communications network serving the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Services were launched on the 15th September 2000. The company combines local Jordanian capability with the technological advantages and network management/operation experience of one of the world's leading telecommunications operators, France Telecom.

MTN Yemen (former Spacetel) has selected Allround's TAP solution as its new roaming management system. The TAP Solution will present MTN Yemen with the latest TAP version and comprehensive features to allow the definition and management of advanced roaming services. The solution will also facilitate the introduction of prepaid and GPRS roaming that will aid the operator in acquiring new customers.

The TAP Solution empowers MTN Yemen to gain full control over its TAP processes for the long-term. It is an investment that guarantees an in-house competence enabling the operator to successfully manage future TAP changes.

Hisham Fathy Ahmed, IT Director of MTN Yemen (former Spacetel) added: "The TAP Solution's proven stability will allow us to effectively handle increasing roaming traffic so that we can continue to provide top quality roaming services to our customers."

MTN Yemen is the leading mobile (GSM) operator in Yemen. The company is a subsidiary of MTN Group, an international telecommunication company headquartered in South Africa.

 

"Can you extract all the Call Detail Records (CDRs) for a given subscriber from yesterday's files - I need to understand what happened?"

That was the problem that faced Rogers AT&T Wireless during their transition from TDMA to launching a Canada wide GSM network. The Information Technology department was tasked with the responsibility of providing these records to Roaming Services, Fraud, Billing, Revenue Assurance, TADIG, Switch Engineering and the software development teams as required.

We could not use the techniques used for years on the simple flat text file layouts of the TDMA data files. Several programmers wrote Java, C or even Visual Basic programs to extract records, but the process was time consuming and required many program changes as the criteria constantly changed from simple to complex.

After an extensive search of Software Vendors and products we found a tool that not only could simplify our data extract requirements, but so much more. The tool is called CeDaR Interactive for Mobile from ALLROUND.

We acquired the product and are using it extensively to satisfy the needs of our internal users. The product is very flexible and provides a wealth of operations and functions to aid our data extraction needs. As well, all the data columns, or tags if you will, are available for use in the extraction criteria, it's awesome. The tool is also straight forward enough to put into the users' hands and we have.

Now, our Billing, TADIG and software testing groups are performing their own extracts, from simple requests like all records for a given subscriber, or who did what and when on this switch, or who is roaming on our network, etc.

If your data extract needs are like ours then seriously consider evaluating and acquiring CeDaR Interactive for Mobile, you will not regret it.

This case study was written by John Soares, President of VIVA International Corporation, a computer consultancy based in Toronto that works with clients in the Information Technology and Telecom sectors.

“In our work, we are used to searching, analyzing and editing Ericsson and Nortel TDMA CDR´s from flat files generated by our switches. We are also responsible for generating specific calls for system tests. Now, we are installing GSM technology and we started to look for a tool that could support us in these tasks we usually perform. Besides the network migration, we are also changing our billing system. These two projects require a lot of TDMA and GSM CDR´s for network and systems tests. All the tools that we found were incomplete. Some of them were only able to read TAP files; others could only read GSM files. We were about to buy two software’s in order to fulfill our needs when we found the ALLROUND home-page. We read about CeDaR and its features and stopped our searches immediately. It was exactly what we wanted - a tool that allows us to search, extract, edit much more easily, not only for TAP, but also for GSM CDR´s and for TDMA and CIBER.

We contacted the people at ALLROUND and began asking for information about the tool. We were very surprised when we received a screenshot for our own CDR that we had sent them just a few minutes earlier. Technically this was the tool we needed for sure. But our team still needed to test the tool before buying it.

ALLROUND found a solution for our needs. We are renting CeDaR while we try it. When we started using it, we found many more FEATURES then we expected. Two days later our team began searching CDR´s in the switch files, extracting and generating others based on them. Creating new records is easy as well as extracting existing ones. Our team is very happy with this choice.

If you are looking for a tool that allows you to manipulate CDR´s think about using CeDaR - I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

This article was written by Leandro Siminovich, IT Analyst at Claro, Brazil.

T-Mobile Slovensko, a.s. (formerly known as EuroTel Bratislava, a.s.) is Slovakia’s leading telecommunications company, offering wireless communications and data network services. Founded in 1991, T-Mobile Slovensko currently operates NMT, GSM 900 and GSM 1800 networks, and the public data network (PDN).

T-Mobile Slovensko offers a diverse portfolio of products and services to its customers. The leadership acquired over the years in the area of technology and product innovation is only one key element in the Company’s success, since excellence in customer care helped T-Mobile Slovensko to reach the summit. In August 2000, T-Mobile Slovensko was the first wireless carrier to commercially launch Mobile Internet Services, which enable the customer to get access to the Internet through a mobile handset. T-Mobile Slovensko also first brought to Slovak customers services such as mobile banking and SMS roaming. As a result, the company is a market leader in roaming.

For call detail related workflow, T-Mobile Slovensko IT experts have been using CeDaR Standard Edition for nearly two years. However, CeDaR has been recently upgraded and now contains the updated versions of TAP, as well as the vendor-specific formats covered by the support services. In order to keep CeDaR updated and to follow the continuous evolution of CDRs, T-Mobile Slovensko decided to extend the list of applied CDR formats. CeDaR is now especially used for analysing and editing Ericsson CDRs, from files generated by our switches. Moreover, because IT staff are pressed to promptly introduce new services and features, this tool is very useful for achieving new marketing features. CeDaR can create different types of CDRs and it is exactly what we wanted – preparing and editing data for testing purposes.

T-Mobile Slovensko has been working with ALLROUND’s software developers for a long time. Past cooperation includes Fraud Detection System, GPRS and IN VPN.

Based on our experience, we can recommend CeDaR to other mobile operators as both a helpful and meaningful tool.

This article was written by Mr. Jaroslav Liberèan, IT Billing Support Manager at T-Mobile Slovensko, Slovak Republic.

Charging the latest mobile services using legacy billing systems

ALLROUND has completed the first deployment of its full functionality CeDaR Utility-based TAP2-TAP3 Converter solution for Pannon GSM, the Hungarian subsidiary of Telenor. The implemented solution aims to provide immediate billing and charging capability for advanced roaming services using the legacy billing and mediation systems without upgrading them.
According to our market survey more and more GSM operators are planning to upgrade their roaming subsystem to be able to handle the TAP3 format. Why has this become a hot issue? Why is this upgrade so urgent in today’s mobile market?
The reasons are simple: customer demands towards value added and content rich services like MMS, W-LAN internet access, etc. are growing rapidly bearing increasing revenue – if the operator is able to charge it to their customers. Previous TAP versions do not meet the requirements of new services laying a significant obstacle to introducing and charging new services and leading to massive revenue and market loss.
Realizing this, Pannon GSM decided to upgrade their system to TAP3. Analyzing the available alternatives (in-house development, clearing house services, billing system upgrade) they have selected ALLROUND’s TAP2-TAP3 Format converter solution that provides the shortest implementation time.
In addition to the rapid (5 weeks from signing the contract) deployment this solution provides the following benefits:
- immediate capability of charging advanced mobile services
- cost savings on DCH costs
- modularity and flexibility ensuring fast introduction of new services
- further postponement of billing system upgrade

ALLROUND’s TAP2-TAP3 Format Converter has been developed for operators using TAP2 roaming data exchange format, who wish to enhance their revenue streams and increase subscriber loyalty by providing advanced services to their customers.