Being able to adapt to market pressures and respond quickly is obviously key to success in today's highly competitive telecoms landscape. And yet many telcos are weighed down by the sheer weight and complexity of their technological and service infrastructures. Opting for a managed services solution provides telcos with enhanced agility in a highly competitive marketplace claims Dominic Smith.

In line with the current emphasis on conserving resources, reducing wastage and cutting carbon emissions, telecommunications services are at the forefront of a revolution in green thinking, which is affecting every business sector today. And telecoms operators themselves are under ever-greater pressure to adopt environmentally friendly strategies.

Today’s converged telecoms market is an increasingly challenging environment for operators featuring greater diversity than ever before in services, providers and pricing. Dominic Smith looks at the importance of joined-up customer service and managing service complexity.

Telecoms operators today are increasingly interested in exploring the benefits of outsourcing their CRM and billing systems to third party solutions providers. Dominic Smith investigates the various approaches to outsourced billing and the benefits which can be achieved.

Considering the scale of revenue losses that many telecoms operators incur, it is vital that they identify the causes, quantify their magnitude and then set about addressing these leakages in a holistic manner. Dominic Smith looks at the main causes of revenue leakage, and outlines ways in which operators can resolve these with the help of end-to-end pre-integrated business support systems.

The emergence of pre-integrated CRM and billing solutions is helping operators to provide not only the highest quality service possible, but also the most straightforward, and so, says Dominic Smith, help prevent customer churn.

Cerillion CEO, Louis Hall, talks to George Malim of Vanilla Plus about continued growth and the on-going operator quest for convergence.

Cerillion CEO, Louis Hall, talks to Lynd Morley of European Communications and explains why he believes the company is uniquely placed in the convergent billing market.

After early optimism about MMS and the expectation of SMS-like success, the latest industry reports show very few MMS being sent each month. What is the problem? Dominic Smith explores the challenges of pricing for MMS services.

In the battle for market share new products, services and applications are being launched on an almost daily basis. However, for many operators, the ability to move with the speed necessary to remain competitive is severely limited by their billing systems.

Rating and Billing of clearing and custody services by clearing houses, exchanges and primary custodians has traditionally been a function of the clearing or custody platform itself. Equally, exchange members, sub-custodians and asset managers have not required details of these costs, happily allocating them to central overhead budgets.

Today the telecom industry has learnt a hard lesson: people do not buy technology; they buy services and benefits. This realisation has led to a focus on applications.

It used to be easy to access investment capital for telecom projects and extensions.

Not so long ago, telecoms networks were run by technocrats and an entire global industry was driven by the race to implement new technology.

The reverberations and repercussions of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington continue to echo around the world. Among various topics, the security and privacy issues highlighted by the events have been the most widely publicised and debated, while others have been left pretty much on the sidelines.