'The distinction between prepaid and postpaid is somewhat artificial'

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What has been the impact of CSG's GSS acquisition by Comverse?
We have done some big announcements in the past couple of months. We acquired the GSS of CSG (known as the Kenan billing system in the market), which closed in December 2005. That integration is going on quite well. The acquisition has enabled Comverse provide a broader range of value added services: one of the drivers was to combine the Comverse Real time billing system and the Kenan FX system. We are going to ship that converged product in the Eastern European market. From the Kenan perspective this was driven by trends that Comverse saw in the marketplace. We had good acceptability in the prepaid billing system. We realized that the distinction between prepaid and postpaid was beginning to blur and, in fact, this distinction is somewhat artificial and needs to come down. One has to look at where customers want to go.

How do you see the Indian market adapting to converged billing solutions?
We have a certain customer base at Kenan and also at Comverse, and have the ability to support very large volumes and cross services product bundling. These are new areas of opportunity for us and there is a huge demand in the market right now.

I think multi-service convergence is with multiple network types. We have customers in India and the world who are using our systems and handling that type of convergence. What we are doing is bringing the prepaid and postpaid into one system. Before we release a product, there is strong documentation followed by strong support services infrastructure in India. Considering the changes that are happening in technology, service providers normally undertake an upgrade of their billing system to take advantage of different things that have been added into the product so that they can evolve with the times. The challenge before the service providers is to offer benefits to customers across services.

Are service providers ready to invest in billing systems?
Indian service providers are willing to spend and they are very serious about providing excellent quality of services.

Do you find any difference in the attitude of incumbents and private operators?
Unlike the popular perceptions, the incumbents do a thorough analysis of every aspect, going through every minute detail.

What is the status of real time billing in India?
Most of the real time billing is prepaid and that is happening to a large extent. There are several operators in India who are doing it. Our real time billing solutions are helping operators drive their revenues; they are also doing real time promotion. If someone is downloading a music video, you can suggest to him other transactions that he might also do. Operators can monitor their subscribers in real time.

Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in