Ensuring Customers will Benefit from Functional Separation
It seems that functional separation has become flavour of the month as Telecoms regulators the world over are considering the benefits of splitting national operators into retail and wholesale operations. This type of business separation has already affected incumbent telcos in a range of countries from New Zealand to the Faeroe Islands and moves are currently on the table to break up the Italian, Swedish and Irish national operators.

Cerillion Event Report: Telecoms CRM and Billing Forum 2008, Prague, 7-9th April
Cerillion was the Silver Sponsor of the recent Telecoms CRM and Billing Forum 2008, run by Marcus Evans, which took place from 7th to 9th April at the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. The event brought together delegates from as far afield as Kenya, Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as a whole smattering of more local countries, with the goal of addressing the key question: How billing systems and CRM activities must be strategically integrated in order to effectively support next generation products and services.

Major Milestone Achieved with 10th Contract for Cerillion 3
Convergent billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, today announced the 10th implementation of Cerillion 3, its flagship convergent CRM and Billing solution. The latest contract, an upgrade to version 3 by existing customer CamGSM in Cambodia, makes Cerillion 3 the most widely deployed Cerillion version ever.

Visit Cerillion at the Mobile World Congress 2008
Cerillion will once again be taking part at the Mobile World Congress (the event formerly known as 3GSM) in Barcelona, 11th – 14th February. Visit us in Hall 2, Stand 2D65 to find out how our unique bundled component product suite can help your business to flourish. The Cerillion team will be present throughout the week, including CEO Louis Hall, providing an ideal opportunity for meetings and product demonstrations.

Outsourced Billing – A Key Tool to Enhance Operator Agility
Being able to respond quickly and positively to market pressures is critical in today’s competitive telecoms environment. Yet it remains an elusive goal for many telcos, who find themselves increasingly burdened by the weight and complexity of their service infrastructures and unable to differentiate their product offerings.

Reader poll
In the December issue, we asked you “By which method do you receive your telecoms bill?”

Rising to the Challenge of Interconnect Billing
In its simplest terms, interconnection between telecoms operators enables voice, video or data traffic to pass across two or more telecoms networks. This is of course a critical technical requirement, enabling a consumer of voice, data or video services on one network to link up with a user on another network.

Cerillion Leads Prepaid-Postpaid Convergence Workshop in Latin America
Cerillion recently took part in the Billing, OSS & BSS Latin America event in Rio de Janeiro. Organised by IBC Brasil, and co-located with a Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management conference, the event is a focal point for the billing industry bringing together more than 150 delegates from across the Latin America region.

Reader poll
In the last issue of Evolve we asked you "When was the last time you had reason to contact your telecom provider about an inaccurate or unclear bill?"

Revenue Assurance – The Integration Challenge
Over the last three or four years, Revenue Assurance has become one of the most fashionable topics in the telecoms industry. It has attracted a whole new wave of companies offering revenue assurance products, solutions and services, and with it the eco-system of conferences and general industry hype that you might expect.

MATTEL chooses Cerillion for Billing and Interconnect Solutions in Mauritania
London, 18 July 2007 – Convergent billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, today announced the completed implementation of its CRM and Billing solution for MATTEL, a GSM network operator in Mauritania, West Africa. Based on the CRM Plus, Revenue Manager, Mediator, Output Streamer and Information Manager products in the Cerillion suite, the new system provides a complete end-to-end solution for MATTEL’s business support systems needs.

Spanish Website and new RSS Feeds
The Cerillion website has recently gone through some enhancements making it more accessible to a global audience and now easier than ever to stay up to date on the latest developments at Cerillion.

The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Green?
Across every industry sector, companies are coming under increasing pressure to adopt environmentally friendly strategies. In line with the current emphasis on conserving resources, reducing wastage and cutting carbon emissions, telecommunications is at the forefront of this revolution in green thinking.

Conserving Resources with Electronic Billing
Telecoms operators have already made a start in the direction of greater environmental responsibility, with several key initiatives already well advanced. One of the most significant of these is the work they are doing to promote electronic billing. Historically, this was sold to customers as a potential cost saving. Hard-copy itemised bills typically entail significant print costs. Electronic billing, in contrast, is comparatively cost-effective.

Pre-integration and the Managed Service Model
Operators can make a more direct contribution towards protecting the environment through the type of systems model they choose to implement. Opting for a pre-integrated set of systems when updating IT systems or IT systems architectures, is a good first step.

A Green Future Ahead
If they have not already deployed them, most of today's telecoms operators are at least considering implementing electronic billing and online self-service capabilities for their customers. Perhaps they also need to look at how they provide those services to their customers and then they really should also consider the benefits of both the pre-integrated solution and the managed service approach.

Keeping things simple for the customer
The joy of events like the 3GSM World Congress is that every new piece of whizzy technology is on display, with vendors touting their latest offerings as being the killer application the telecoms world has been waiting for. Of course many of these services are what are sometimes referred to as leading edge – which fundamentally means new technology which has not yet been market tested.

Dominic Smith talks to Brett St Clair, Cerillion's new Business Development Manager based in Johannesburg, about plans for growth in Africa
"My experience in Africa over the last couple of years has really highlighted the opportunity that remains for pre-integrated billing solutions and I have a firm belief that Cerillion is well placed to address these needs."

Cerillion Event Report: IIR Interconnect Billing Conference, Prague 19-22 March
Following the highly successful Interconnect Billing workshop at Caricam Mobile 2006, Cerillion recently took part in IIR’s “Optimising Interconnect Billing and Accounting Strategies” conference in Prague. With operator delegates from across the EMEA region, the conference addressed the key challenges of minimising interconnect costs and securing interconnect revenues now and in the future.

engin selects Cerillion to facilitate new growth in Australia
London, UK, 8 February 2007 – Convergent billing and CRM specialist, Cerillion Technologies, today announced that engin, Australia’s leading broadband phone company, has selected Cerillion to provide a new CRM, billing and mediation solution for its rapidly expanding operations.

It’s The Quality of Mulitplay Services That Counts, Not The Quantity
As a triple-play subscriber for the past 4 years, courtesy of my Cable provider, it’s hard to get excited by all the industry hype surrounding bundles of TV, Broadband and Voice.

An interview with Melvin Hodgson, CALA Business Development Manager, Cerillion Technologies
Cerillion have achieved a significant market share in other parts of the world and as a native of the CALA region, I see a great synergy and significant opportunity to expand our footprint in these markets.

Cerillion Event Report: Interconnect Billing Workshop at Caricam Mobile 2006
At the recent Caricam Mobile 2006 in Puerto Rico , Cerillion and Lucent joined forces to deliver a comprehensive interconnect billing workshop in partnership with CANTO—The Caribbean Association of National Telecom Operators.

Cerillion Technologies Breaks into List of Britain’s Fastest-Growing Unquoted Technology Companies
London, 27 September, 2006 – Convergent billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, has been named one of Britain’s fastest-growing private technology companies in this year’s Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100:- a league table, ranking companies by sales growth over the period 2003-2005.

Excuse me, but do you do IMS Billing?
Each and every week another batch of conference brochures plops fatly onto my desk, all of them pushing the latest and greatest trends in the telecoms industry and enticing me to participate in yet another “only event of its kind”.

Cerillion Solution Focus: Broadband and Multi-Play
Are your business support systems unable to support the complexities of broadband and multi-play services? Do your Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) have to switch between several different applications during each customer session, wasting valuable time and introducing revenue assurance headaches?

Cerillion Implements Broadband Billing Solution for Bulldog Communications
Convergent Billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, has announced the successful implementation of the Cerillion CRM and Billing solution for Bulldog Communications Ltd, a subsidiary of Cable and Wireless in the UK.

Reltelwireless Choose Cerillion For New Mediation Solution
Cerillion Technologies today announced a new contract with Reliance Telecommunications (Reltelwireless) to implement a complete mediation solution for their CDMA network in Nigeria.

Playing the multi-play game
The notion of 'triple-play' services – bundles of voice, TV/video and broadband delivered from a single supplier – has been around for a few years now...

Continued growth brings new office in Germany
An interview with Frank van Gumpel, Vice President, European Sales, Cerillion Technologies.

Manx Telecom Secures BABT Approval Using Cerillion Billing Solution
Cerillion Technologies today announced that Manx Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 and part of the Telefonica group, had become the first combined fixed and mobile telecommunications company in the world to gain BABT approval for its billing.

Cerillion Solution Focus: Managed Service Billing
Is your current billing system unable to support new services without continuous modification? Or is your cost of operation spiralling out of control?

Billing & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
Asks communication service providers the deceptively simple question “What business are you really in?” and examines the implications of the answers.

Putting On The Screws
As the market gets tougher, how can operators improve their margins? This article looks at where extra profits and cash flow might be found.

All Change For Service Provisioning
With business changing so fast, how do you ensure rapid and efficient provisioning for your customers? This article suggests an architectural approach.