Ericsson bags Vodafone deal for new pre-paid charging system

Our Bureau Updated - August 11, 2014 at 10:02 PM.

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Over 75 million pre-paid mobile users on Vodafone’s network will be able to avail host of new services such as flexible refill, community charging, real time balance notifications and adjust their tariff plans themselves.

That’s because Vodafone has done a new deal with Swedish equipment major Ericsson to deploy a platform called Prepaid Charging System.

The new system will allow self-service functionality for Vodafone’s national prepaid customer base across seven circles. This will also enable new revenue-generating features and potential payment convergence across pre-paid and post-paid segments. Vodafone will be able to provide personalised offers to individual consumers by understanding their service consumption patterns.

5-year pact
As a part of the five-year agreement, Ericsson will be replacing legacy infrastructure with its new system across five circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, in addition to Mumbai & Maharashtra circles where it was already deployed.

Vishant Vora, Director –Technology, Vodafone India, said: “The fast-maturing Indian mobile Internet consumers expect greater control and flexibility on the kind of services they want to consume, when they want to consume and how they would like to pay for it. The one-size-fits-all and tiered pricing models for services are being fast replaced by a need for personalised services.”

Chris Houghton, Head of Ericsson Region India, said: “Our solution creates greater monetisation opportunities while simultaneously reducing the overall service activation, management and delivery costs.

More importantly, it also provides Vodafone the flexibility to maintain one convergent system across all services, networks and payment methods.”

Cost-saving solution The solution can process almost double the traffic compared to the legacy solution. This will also help save on data centre space and energy requirements.

Advanced features will allow for better segmentation to drive higher revenue-generating services for Vodafone India.

Ericsson has been a long-term partner for Vodafone. In 2010, Ericsson was chosen by Vodafone for supplying 3G-related hardware, software and related service vendor to equip India’s largest metropolitan cities; Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with latest high speed mobile broadband network.

Published on August 11, 2014 16:32