Globe Telecom, Inc., Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. (PLDT), and, Smart Communications, Inc.

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Fujitsu's Prospero penetrates key Telco Markets

Smart Communications, Globe Telecom and PLDT all use Prospero to support inter-carrier settlement requirements

THREE major carriers - Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. (PLDT); Globe Telecom, Inc.; and, Smart Communications, Inc. - aim to provide a greater level of efficiency for their inter-carrier settlements, choosing Prospero, a call revenue management system, as the most viable solution to meet their unique interconnection call rating and settlement requirements.

Fujitsu Philippines, Inc. (FPI) and ICL plc, a major European I.T. services company and a member of the Fujitsu International Group of Companies, have successfully completed the implementation of turnkey revenue management solutions in these three major local telephone operators. The contracts include the supply of ICL's interconnect application - Prospero - implementation, systems integration, and support services as well as hardware. FPI and ICL believe that the success of the implementations in PLDT, Smart and Globe has established Prospero as a market leader.

Managing a mixture of domestic and international interconnect agreements, the new system will help improve the operators' profitability and better handle the very complex domestic revenue-sharing model. The past few years have seen an expansion in subscribers and operators in the Philippines resulting in increasing volume and cost of traffic crossing networks. Without an accurate accounting system, disputes on inter-carrier settlement between operators have been difficult to resolve.

Prospero was developed for telephony operators by ICL. Prospero enables calls to be rated within seconds of their receipt, instead of waiting for the traditional batch billing system to do the rating function later. Prospero's rating can be done both for the usage of retail customers, as well as for the interconnect charges due to inter-carrier traffic. These "rated" call records can quickly be made available for inter-carrier usage reporting, fraud and credit control processes, margin analysis, and retail customer billing.

Since the beginning of industry liberalization, the local telco market has seen several market entrants compete for market share. Margins eroded, as services began to span across facilities of competing carriers. For better efficiency in the use of facilities, a carrier needed to compute inter-carrier call charges quickly and accurately. This will help them make settlements faster, and will shorten the resolution of frequently-occurring disputes.

Art Generoso, Public Systems Sector Head at FPI, explained that the ability to deliver new and creative "value-add" services to clients will be a major factor in determining a telco's success in the market. From voice, data, and video integration, to third-generation wireless services, there is a wide range of features that companies can provide to their customers. Generoso said "at the end of the day, the kind of service that carriers can deliver to the masses will be the deciding factor as to who will be the dominant player in the industry." FPI has immersed itself at the forefront of this industry, giving telecommunications companies a competitive edge through technology. FPI has built an end-to-end suite of best-of-breed technology solutions for business and operational demands of the telecoms industry.

Generoso added, "The search for solutions that can address the needs of the market is a never-ending quest. Technology is driving the market, so we need to be constantly updated on the end-to-end telecommunication solutions that are already available. "

He stressed that to be able to offer value-added services in the telco market (such as third generation wireless services, messaging services, virtual private networks, and intelligent networks), interconnection will be a major issue. "And every time interconnection is an issue, Prospero will always be there to try and accommodate the changes driven by the new services." FPI and ICL jointly undertook extensive market research and initiated a unique Philippines interconnect industry workshop programme to develop Prospero to handle the complex Philippine environment.

Prospero Markets Globe

Globe Telecom recently went online with its Prospero project after less than one year of preparation and implementation. Generoso says that Prospero serves as the main engine for Globe's inter-carrier settlement system, tasked to do wholesale rating for national and international call rating and settlement.

"We went live last April 2 and Globe is happy with the way implementation was carried out," said Generoso. He added that Globe's inter-carrier settlement is now much easier because call data reports are generated much faster. Prospero accepts input from Globe's switching system and then processes this according to the user-maintained Tariff Tables. The resulting call data records are then stored in a relational database, from which usage reports are easily generated. Globe's Prospero system runs on a Digital Alpha Server, with Oracle relational DBMS as a repository for call data records. Fujitsu DESKPOWER PC's act as the front-end interfaces for the system. FPI served as the turnkey systems integrator for the entire project.

Prospero Markets Smart

Another carrier, Smart Communications, Inc., is determined to be a premier telecommunications carrier in the country, offering a broad and integrated range of domestic and international telecommunications services which are reliable, affordable, and available on demand. That was why the company decided to come up with Smart Integrated Business System (SIBS) to fulfill its entire requirements.

In line with Smart's business vision, the scope of the SIBS project was for the provision of a total solution to achieve an integrated business system that would fully meet Smart's present needs and provide flexible enhancements for future growth. Smart identified four major requirements: a comprehensive billing and customer care system; an intercarrier settlement system; service activation system; and a billing mediation system.

In March 1998, Smart chose Fujitsu's system integration proposal that included Inter-Carrier Settlement (using Prospero), Mediation (using ICL SIMS-E), and Service Activation (using OSI NetExpert). Fujitsu also proposed Oracle RDBMS and BEA's Tuxedo middleware running on HP-UX as the operating platform, with Hewlett-Packard 9000 servers and Satelcom's Megapac routers.

Prospero Markets PLDT

Dominant carrier PLDT's Prospero system earlier went live on February 1999, running the inter-carrier settlement system. "The main challenge with PLDT was that they were the biggest carrier having the most number of agreements with other telcos. They were also the very first telco in the Philippines to implement the system," said Generoso.

Fast Growth

Generoso continued, "Telecommunications has become one of the fastest growing and highly competitive industries worldwide. With market deregulation and the entry of new companies in the field, telco's are looking at technology to streamline their operations and deliver new and creative services to an increasingly demanding market."

Despite the economic slump that hit the Asian region in the previous year, the telecommunications industry is one of the few bright spots in the Philippines, posting a 17.2 % growth. Strong government support for the industry and government-initiated projects are among the factors that are pushing the growth of the telecommunications industry in the country.

As of August 1998, the Philippines has had a teledensity of 9.55 telephone lines per 100 individuals - a considerable improvement over the previous years' figures. The local cellular communications market is growing at a rate of 500,000 subscribers a year, and expected to reach up to 2.8 million subscribers by the year 2000. Generoso believes that the market still holds a tremendous potential for growth, having the opportunity to catch up with neighboring countries like Malaysia.

"The demand for business support and operational support solutions would still be there for the next five years," says Generoso. "This is driven by the demand to constantly offer new services in the market. It's only now that the industry's picking up in terms of implementing solutions that has long been offered in the markets outside the country, and this is an area that I believe Fujitsu has great opportunities."

"As a system integrator, FPI offers best-of-breed solutions, geared for the telecommunications industry. This would include business support systems, operational support systems, and even network infrastructure and management. And FPI's added value is our people: we are prepared to use the talents of our local workforce, assisted by Fujitsu's global telecoms specialists, to take the total responsibility for turnkey implementation of big system integration projects," says Generoso. "We know that telco's want a reliable system integrator who understands industry needs, and who is willing to take on the challenges of turnkey implementation. More important, they will value a company who can deliver superb after-sales support and maintenance services, to keep the systems running long after the projects are implemented. I am sure that Fujitsu Philippines fits this bill, and will continue to be a major player in the growing telco business."

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