Durban spends R500m on billing system

Costs for the development of an electronic revenue management system for the eThekwini Municipality have spiralled, with ratepayers paying almost R500 million for it, reports the Independent Online.

The system will manage billing and revenue collection, and debt management, including disconnection of services. It replaces the existing Coins Billing System.

Delays in developing the system increased costs from R90 million to R150 million in 2004 to R408 million earlier this year. The costs could escalate further, as the 1 November "go-live" deadline has passed.

Princeton University will move to an online billing and payment system for tuition and student-account charges, states the Daily Princetonian.

Effective 1 December, students and families will be able to use TigerPay, a new system administered by Sallie Mae Solutions and the Office of Information Technology.

“Security was one of the main reasons [for the switch],” University bursar Maria Bizzarri said. “Everything is on [Sallie Mae's] secured server instead of having everything stored locally.”

Online marketing revenue is at nearly $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008 - up 11% from last year - according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, says ClickThrough.

The rise is a 2% increase from the previous quarter of this year, with this quarter's result the second highest ever. However, compared to recent performance, the figures find the quarter-to-quarter curve remains "relatively flat".

Randall Rothernberg, president and CEO of the IAB, said: "The growth of interactive advertising that we've been experiencing over the past few years has stabilised due in large part to the difficult current economic climate."