Industries:
|
Offering Groups:
|
Solution Areas:
|
Regions:
|
Challenges:
|
Benefits:
|
British Telecom Cellnet
BT Cellnet taps FPI to upgrade GPRS
As a network provider, British Telecom Cellnet is responsible for providing network infrastructure and services to customers who purchase subscriptions through service provider channels. BT Cellnet bills these service providers for network services at wholesale rates.
BT Cellnet also makes this wholesale information available electronically to the service providers so that they can use the information as the basis for retail rating and billing. It was in this case that the BT Cellnet Generalized Radio Packet Service (GPRS) project came into being.
The project delivered wholesale rating, wholesale billing, and the distribution of wholesale information to service providers to support this network provider role. There were six interfaces developed to address BT Cellnet's requirements.
As part of BT Cellnet's GPRS program, BT Cellnet planned an upgrade of the project to enable the company to make use of a new functionality that would support usage-based products and GPRS roaming.
This upgrade involved major changes in the interfaces covered in phase one and introduction of three interfaces for reporting and filtering of GPRS events.
Fujitsu Philippines, Inc.'s wholly owned software development subsidiary, WeServ Systems International took the development tasks such as subsystem design, coding, testing, and system test support. This upgrade phase was successfully delivered in January 2001.
Another phase immediately followed in February 2001 as BT Cellnet wanted to adapt the current GPRS rating and billing environment to support its GPRS outbound roaming requirements.
This would be in conjunction with the use of Dan Net, a clearing house that undertakes all FNO (Foreign Network Operator) settlement activities, leaving only the need for BT Cellnet to support the wholesale and retail processing for outbound roamers, i.e., BTCellnet subscribers roaming abroad.
Again, WeServ participated in this phase, which involved the testing stage of the development cycle for all interfaces of GPRS roaming, as well as the GPRS upgrade version. The WeServ staff was also given the responsibility of problem analysis, bug fixing, and implementation of change controls as requested by BT Cellnet. This phase was successfully delivered in May 2001.
Felipe R. Manalang, FPI President, said, "BT Cellnet remarked how well the project went and also that the quality of the delivery was very high. In fact, there had been comments that BT Cellnet's testing team were becoming frustrated because the group could not find more problems!"
