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G. Rambabu

"We have just finished a recruitment campaign with top universities in India. CSG would continue to tap the rich pool of human resources available in India to aid in the deployment of applications related to telecom billing around Asia."

NEW DELHI, March 6

BILLING and customer-care solutions major CSG Systems Inc., which has been servicing more than 230 companies across 40 countries over the past 20 years, has trained its eyes on India.

Having already notched up a significant share of the billing market in the country, the company is now seeking to expand its presence and ramp its employee base to take the first-mover advantage in this space. As Mr Raghav Sahgal, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific & China, CSG, says, CSG is quite bullish on the Indian market.

Excerpts from the interview:

Could you give a brief background of CSG Systems? What are the focus areas?

CSG Systems is a subsidiary of CSG Systems International Inc, with more than 25 offices worldwide. We have a significant market share in the next-generation billing and customer care solutions spanning the communications industry in its entirety, including cable television, direct broadcast satellite, advanced IP services, next-generation mobile and fixed wireline markets.

Our software solutions process more than 400 million events daily and help operators offer hundreds of services. Our service bureau operations support more than 40,000 service representatives and process over 50 million statements per month in North America alone.

Where would you place India in the Asia-Pacific market?

India holds a very significant position in our global and Asia-Pacific strategy. The domestic telecom scenario is witnessing rapid changes as is evident in the opening up of VoIP space, rapid growth in mobile telephony, presence of private players in ILD/NLD markets and launching of CDMA-based WLL services. We see India as a market with immense opportunity and are gearing ourselves to tap the potential. CSG already has reputed Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Tata TeleServcices and Bharti as its clients.

How do you propose to capitalise on this telecom growth? What are the investments being planned?

We have established a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of CSG Systems in India and have a reasonably well-staffed operations centre and R&D activities to support our major deployments in India. This year, we are expanding the operations to take on more regional operations. We have just finished a recruitment campaign with top universities in India. CSG would continue to tap the rich pool of human resources available in India to aid in the deployment of applications related to telecom billing around Asia.

Which are the key segments in the telecom sector that CSG is targeting - - GSM cellular, CDMA or wireline?

Our flagship product - - CSG Kenan BP - - has been deployed in more than 40 countries across different industries employing different standards and technologies; thus we could claim that our solutions are network-and technology-agnostic.

We are targeting all segments of the communication industry because CSG's solutions have exhibited their proven strength and future readiness across the entire communications industry. We are providing billing solutions for both the wireless and wireline services of Bharti under the brand name Airtel and TouchTel respectively. We have a similar agreement with Tata TeleServices Ltd (TTSL), under which TTSL will use CSG Kenan/BP billing and customer care solutions. As the company expands its services in these markets, CSG Kenan/BP also will support the billing for the company's entire suite of services, including wireless Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), wireline telephony, Internet data and ISP services.

We have also been selected as the exclusive billing and customer care subcontractor to support BSNL's launch of GSM mobile services nationwide. Almost all the major telecom players of India have shown interest in our solutions and to this end, we are in talks with them. However, I am not in a position to give you more details on this now.

Are CSG solutions fraud-proof? Worldwide it has been seen that frauds in the telecom sector, especially with regard to billing, are also on the increase. How do you ensure that the systems are not hacked?

With more than 265 deployments across the world, our solutions feature tried and tested carrier-class architecture, minimising the risk of failure. We offer carriers total billing and customer care solution that arms them with the power to meet all current and future requirements.

We have a built-in security layer that is configurable and can interface to any external security system such as kerberos, radius, ldap, or firewalls over java/xml.

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