South Africa's Tellumat has partnered with India-based SunTec Business Solutions to offer a billing solution for small and start-up telecommunications providers in southern Africa.
"For any telecommunications network, its billing system is absolutely critical, but keeping an accurate record of calls made and billing them to the right customer is not an easy task, all the more so as operators introduce more diverse and complex services," says Tellumat managing executive Geoff Carey.
Carey says most telecommunications billing systems have been expensive and are generally not viable for networks with fewer than about 100 000 subscribers. "That's been one of the barriers to new entrants into the market, such as the underserviced area licensees, many of whom have been struggling to create viable businesses based on much lower subscriber numbers."
However, he says, it is not only the telecommunications companies looking to implement telecoms billing systems. "There are also many municipalities, companies with private networks and emerging voice over IP providers who need flexible, reliable billing systems."
According to the company, the hosted solution provided by Tellumat covers the current requirements of telecoms operators, as well as being adaptable to meet new service requirements being introduced, such as IPTV, WiMax and convergent billing for different services on a single bill.
"It's a completely different way of doing things," adds Carey. "We hope that by providing an affordable and flexible hosted billing solution, we can help enable many new market entrants who would otherwise be excluded. It's that kind of increased competition that will lead to better, more diverse services and lower prices for all."
Related story:
The case for secure e-document delivery
Share