Future-proof BSS architecture for quad-play services

GO is the largest communications and entertainment provider in Malta with well over 480,000 customer connections.

GO has been providing telecom services in Malta for more than 35 years, originally as the fixed line incumbent, then introducing the first nationwide dial-up services in the early 1990’s and subsequently adding broadband in 2000. The mobile arm of the group was set up in 1999, with the most recent addition being TV in 2007, making GO the first and only quad-play provider in Malta.

GO (then known as Maltacom) originally selected Cerillion to support its fixed line services back in 2001. Since then, GO has restructured its business to become a fully integrated quad-play operator and set out on a programme to consolidate its IT platforms in order to improve its commercial offerings, accelerate time-to-market and increase its operational flexibility.

Challenges

As the leading provider of communications and entertainment services on the Maltese Islands, GO has always prided itself on innovation. With telecoms technologies evolving so quickly, GO recognised the need to create a future-proof Business Support Systems (BSS) architecture that will support changes in business strategy and enable GO to take advantage of multiple future technology streams.

This has resulted in a number of key requirements for GO’s BSS platforms:

• Support a fully convergent quad-play (fixed, mobile, internet, TV) service portfolio
• Enable flexible bundling and unbundling of services to compete with single-service and multi-service offerings of competitors
• Reduce time-to-market to significantly less than one month
• Rationalise the number of systems and increase operational efficiencies
• Support a best-of-breed architecture with clearly defined APIs and supporting a Service Oriented Architecture

Cerillion Solution

The solution at GO is made up of the following components in the pre-integrated Cerillion suite, deployed on an HP/Oracle platform:

• Revenue Manager
• CRM Plus
• Output Streamer
• Information Manager
• Interconnect Manager

Results

Following a very smooth and successful upgrade to Cerillion 5 in 2009, GO settled on its BSS strategy with Cerillion chosen as the best-of-breed component for Billing its quad-play services. In the meantime, GO has also upgraded to the latest Interconnect Manager version for managing all its interconnect agreements.

With fixed, TV and broadband services already live on the Cerillion system, GO is now migrating its mobile services onto the same platform, with the legacy mobile billing system to be retired later this year. Once completed, this will enable GO to realise all the benefits of managing a unified product catalogue and billing for all quad-play services on a single, convergent platform.

Cerillion and GO have worked in close partnership throughout this project, with alignment of the project teams to ensure a mutual understanding of the project goals and where GO wants to be in 3 years time.

“I see many vendors who just push their standard ‘cookie cutter’ product which is OK for you, but in practice every market has its own sensitivities so there’s no standard template ever that will work”, comments Alan Zammit, CIO, GO. “Adaptability and flexibility of the vendor is critical – and that is where Cerillion meets our needs. By the end of this year, we will be thinking and designing from a billing angle and a bundling point of view, one system, one paradigm and one customer base.”