OPTUS

Australian-owned and operated MVNE/MVNO enabler, Utilibill, has completed the integration of its end-to-end online platform for Optus resellers, Its first customer Telcoinabox goes live this week.

Utilibill managing director, Morgan Duncan says that this is more than just the addition of integration into another carrier.

“This is a breakthrough for MVNE’s and MVNO’s, for the MVNE it provides everything required of a “drop-in” white labelled wholesale mobile offering, and for the MVNO the ability to manage their customer end-to-end on one user friendly interface. Of particular benefit is the enablers full visibility of the operators activities. This assists in workflow management as well as escalations, ticketing and troubleshooting”

The platform bills, provisions, monitors and manages the complete back end administration of all 2G, 3G and wireless Optus products.

Designed by Igor Green , Utilibill has complex rating engine, which is capable of highly complex rating which includes call caps, fleet calls, mates rates, value packs and so on. This is offered both at the MVNE level as well as the MVNO level.

It provides supply chain management and improved risk management. Enablers offering handset finance and up front commissions to operators needs to be diligent with their risk management strategy. Utilibill latest release includes a finance bundle which manages inventory, controls revenue leakage and manages debt.

“OPTUS are innovative in their wholesale mobile division. Inclusion of retail minus modelling, upfront commissions and claw back management require focus to create an all encompassing and operationally effective system.”

“Telcoinabox invested over 2000 hours of their own time working through scope and use cases for this project, as well as automation of handset ordering, drop ship and device finance. This level of effort and insight from the users perspective is what it takes to deploy effective solutions.”

In the market today stagnant resellers are more focused on pumping integration out as cheaply as possible – innovation is expensive. Telcoinabox has a record of meeting its objectives, in order for them to meet a $60M commitment they depend heavily on systems and a reliable support framework. Utilibill has delivered this.

This next generation technology replaces the entire back end function with a one step automated billing process that seamlessly integrates into Optus’ web services infrastructure alleviating the requirement to activate services in one platform, order handsets in an inventory system, bill in a billing system, and have customers pay in a payment system. This old segmented approach surprisingly is still commonplace in this industry.

“All resellers with an OPTUS agreement and SIMs need to do is customize their rate plans, the look of their invoices, populate the handset ordering system and start provisioning. Their customers can immediately view itemization and pay their bill online – it’s that simple,” he says.

Telcoinabox with 100+ service providers, one of the largest groups of Optus resellers, have been fitted out with the new system in Australia. They also use the platform to provide full automation for Telstra’s service bundle of Fixed, Mobile and Data.