ALBtelecom and EagleMobileService provider and market evolution accelarated by integral support to rural area networking, IP MPLS network design, advanced cloud offering adoption, and Convergent Billing and CRM solution

Albania’s telecom market is very specific with penetration rate for fixed telephony lines of only 25 - 35%, according to vari-ous sources of statistical data. With the arrival of capitalism in late nineties, strengthening role of mobile phone usage and increased level of penetration, end users mostly converted to using mobile phones as their main preference while the de-velopment phase and accompanying increase in the fixed-line business, in the usual sense, was literally skipped.

Despite of the small volume of using fixed telephony serv-ices, ALBtelecom invested considerable amount of effort and resources into fixed infrastructure development since it was a main prerequisite for the consistent development of broad-band Internet. Broadband Internet penetration was, on the other hand, main precondition for enhancing customer’s portfolio with advanced convergent services. ALBtelecom has about 95% of fixed lines in the country, and around 65% stake

in the broadband market, while the remaining 35% are divided among 70 small operators that certainly evidenced an extreme market fragmentation.

Since almost 70% of Albanians live in rural areas a great busi-ness challenge was to bring advanced Internet services into the rural areas and to simultaneously build a set of advanced serv-ices for corporate and residential users in urban areas.

Offering convergent network services and an increase in cus-tomer’s end-user base created a strong business need to implement sophisticated network provisioning services and convergent billing systems. Main strategic objective, beside commercialization of advanced services was to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

Business Challenges

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It was of utmost priority for ALBtelecom to connect with a re-liable partner who has the experience, expertise and offers a comprehensive and integral approach in multi-service network optimization projects, implementation of sophisticated tech-nological solutions and network management services.

Rich reference projects portfolio, as well as the ability to proac-tively identify and resolve user problems were crucial for se-lecting Verso Group as prime contractor, system integrator and project management advisor simultaneously.

Project scopeProject scope was modularly determined. Since broadband Internet penetration was main prerequisite for enhancing cus-tomer’s portfolio with advanced convergent services, an ex-tensive rural area-networking project preceded cloud service offering adoption and convergent billing and CRM solution im-plementation.

Comprehensive cooperation scope was divided into separate projects:

•  Rural area networking

•  IP MPLS Network optimization and Cloud service offering adoption

•  Convergent Billing solution implementation

•  Convergent Customer Relationship Management solution

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Since the majority of Albanian popula-tion resided in rural areas, while the fixed telephone infrastructure was not suffi-ciently developed to be a strong driver of growth and momentum of advanced Internet services, before any plans for introduction of converged services over IP network were done, it was necessary to bring broadband Internet to rural ar-eas and to simultaneously bear in mind resources optimization and customer’s investment rationalization.

Extensive situation analysis, develop-ment of several scenarios of possible solutions and evaluation of potential costs and benefits was performed and optimal solution selected. Main goal that had to be achieved with implemen-tation of selected solution was to simul-taneously solve several problems, such as bringing broadband Internet to rural, especially mountainous regions, and the possibility of consuming advanced serv-ices over network that were previously unavailable. Socially responsible role of this project was also not to be ignored as increased Internet penetration as a pub-lic good was one of the prerequisites for development of the whole rural region.

About 2,000 schools were involved in a project in which more than half that number, mainly schools in the moun-

tainous and less developed areas, were equipped with devices used as broad-band internet access point, while the rest of the schools were covered through fixed lines, ADSL lines, where ALBtele-com already had the infrastructure. Rural schools that were connected wirelessly in that way became Internet service pro-viders for the whole village and wider area.

VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER

Carrying out a comprehensive project of equipping schools and their setting in the role of Internet service provider network access point, ALBtelecom was able to additionally enhance and fur-ther consolidate its market share since it directly opened a whole new service distribution chan-nel which did not existed before. The whole rural area welcomed Internet service and was eager to consume network services, which was a good starting point to mar-keter network services.

Rural area networkingBROADBAND INTERNET AS A KEY NETWORKED SERVICE DEMAND DRIVER

” The whole rural area welcomed Internet service and was eager to consume network services

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After ensuring access to broadband Internet for many residential and busi-ness customers, successive step was to prepare the network for delivering advanced network services in the near future. Therefore Verso helped customer to strategically plan the network design in order to be able to deploy and com-mercialize new services. Customer’s evolution as a modern service provider needed to trend towards all-IP NGN con-cept and building MPLS based IP core, as a widely accepted standard way of de-veloping and deploying service provider networks, was proposed.

IP MPLS network was built and served as a multi-service network to support both schools in the rural areas with basic serv-ices of Internet access but also as inevi-table support to business users enabling them to consume advanced cloud based “hosted” or “managed” services, such as IP Telephony, hosted Exchange, host-ed call center services, disaster recovery services, etc.

VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER

Since customer’s development plans for their business users service portfolio greatly rely on strengthening cloud infrastruc-ture to support cloud services de-livery, especially valuable were workshops and training sessions that Verso regularly held for sales and marketing team. Educations mainly included detailed expla-nations about important charac-teristics of the implemented so-lution and consuming scenarios, detailed analysis of development potentials as well as presenta-tion of new ways of marketeering advance service offering. Work-shops were extremely useful for customer employees as they provided guidance in identifying specific preferences and needs of market segments that a particu-lar service could satisfy.

IP MPLS Network optimization and Cloud service offering adoptionINNOVATIVE SERVICES AS A WAY TO INCREASE END-USERS COMPETITIVNESS

” Especially valuable were workshops and training sessions that Verso regularly held for sales and marketing team

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Due to service portfolio expansion and exploding number of end-users, cus-tomer needed to implement a reliable solution to simultaneously provision end-user profiles and effectively manage the process of charging, billing and col-lection.

Strategic decision was taken and it in-cluded an integral billing and rating platform, SAP Consume to Cash Solution (SAP C2C) to be deployed in ALBtelecom, but also in the business environment of a sister company EagleMobile, the third mobile operator in Albania. SAP C2C solution was deployed as a billing and rating platform for all services offered across customer’s service and products portfolio.

VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER

By implementing advanced bill-ing and rating platform, customer was able to automate service pricing and modeling and to sim-plify and completely automate billing process enabling thus comprehensive real-time service monetization.

Advanced functionality allowed customer to quickly roll out in-novative pricing and rating strat-egies in response to market de-mands while performed analytics allowed the organization to man-age comprehensive and scalable monetization of new real-time data services.

Convergent Billing solution implementationENABLING SEAMLESS SERVICE MONETIZATION

” By implementing advanced billing and rating platform, customer was able to automate service pricing and modeling

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A demand to streamline business proc-esses was put before customer’s man-agement, along with constant require-ments to reduce errors and lower cost of interaction with end-users.

In order to integrate billing and invoicing and rating and charging with fulfillment processes company-wide, user needed to deploy convergent customer rela-tionship management solution to eas-ily manage offers, order processing and monitoring and to capture orders in an effective way.

Since customer entered new markets and had extensive plans for introducing new products and services, a solid and reliable customer relationship manage-ment was a top priority.

VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER

Implemented solution helped in-tegrate sales, service and market-ing through business processes and enterprise applications thus enabling customer to easily man-age three important customer-focused issues: generating new growth, attaining operational excellence, and enhancing com-petitive agility. Deploying SAP CRM enabled holistic, disciplined approach to marketing planning that could drive growth, improve competitive agility and improve operational excellence.

Advanced features allowed cus-tomer to respond to changes more faster and significantly in-crease service levels.

Convergent Customer Relationship Management solutionACHIEVING CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

” Advanced features allowed customer to respond to changes more faster and significantly increase service levels

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About ALBtelecomALBtelecom is the largest fixed operating telephone company in the country offer-ing it’s services in all urban areas of the country, meanwhile it expands telecom-munication services almost in the whole country through interconnection partner-ship with other rural operators.

ALBtelecom operates in Albanian market with some major services such as fixed telephone, ISDN service, Dedicated In-ternet acc, ADSL, Dial-up, Intranet, Pre-paid Cards, etc. On the other side, the company is investing to expand the serv-ices in parallel with a sensitive quality of service improvement. During the last 15 years, the company has made several investments enhancing the quality of services and number of services offered offered to the end users increased.

www.albtelecom.al

About VersoVerso is regional networking power-house, encompassing technological, organizational, business and commer-cial knowledge and expertise with the provisioning of products and services needed by companies transitioning into networked economy.

Verso is strongly focused on service pro-viders and enterprise market and has many years of experience in internation-al projects implementing networking, IP telephony, IPTV and converged billing solution for service providers, enterpris-es and governments across EMEA region, Near East and beyond.

www.verso.hr

About AltimaAltima, part of Verso group of companies, offers full lifecycle services, starting from consultancy, planning and design, to maintenance and proactive exploitation services, support and training. Altima is strongly focused on service providers, implementing world’s leading provider’s solutions for pricing, rating & charging, billing systems, and offering profes-sional services in integration projects encompassing NGOSS integration with provisioning systems, mediation and network management.

www.altima.hr

Mrežne tehnologije VERSO d.o.o. Froudeova 5 HR-10000 Zagreb Croatia tel.: +385/1/6596-600 fax.: +385/1/6536-873 e-mail: info@verso.hrweb: www.verso.hr

Altima d.o.o.Froudeova 5 HR-10020 Zagreb Croatia tel: +385/1/6408 000 fax: +385/1/6408 001 e-mail: info@altima.hrweb: www.altima.hr