New Charging System will enhance user experience by allowing self-service functionality for half of Vodafones national prepaid customer baseEricsson Charging platform to be launched across 7 Vodafone circles, enabling new revenue-generating features and potential payment convergence across prepaid and postpaid segments
Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) has successfully deployed its industry leading Charging System for Vodafone India. The Ericsson Charging System enables a host of new services like flexible refill, community charging and real time balance notifications among several other different voice and data offerings for over 75 million prepaid customers. These customers will now be able to adjust their plans themselves, improving their overall customer experience. It will also enable Vodafone to provide personalized offers to individual consumers by understanding their service consumption patterns.
As a part of the five-year agreement, Ericsson will be replacing legacy infrastructure with its new Charging System across five new circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, in addition to Mumbai and Maharashtra circles where it was already deployed. The deployment will enable convergence across payment methodologies and devices, and enable Vodafone to activate enhanced data charging via mobile broadband charging in the future.
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 personalized services. We have deployed the Ericsson Charging system to meet these changing needs of our customers.
Chris Houghton, Head of Ericsson Region India, said: Our solution creates greater monetization 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.
The solution offers a dense computing platform, which can process almost double the traffic compared to the legacy solution. This will also help save on datacenter space and energy requirements. Advanced features will allow for better segmentation to drive higher revenue-generating services for Vodafone India. These include personalized offer management, flexible refill and community charging.
Ericsson has been a long-term partner for Vodafone. In 2010, Ericsson was chosen by Vodafone as an exclusive 3G HSPA hardware, software and related service vendor to equip Indias largest metropolitan cities; Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with the latest HSPA mobile broadband network.
Worldwide, Ericsson delivers more than 1,500 consulting and systems integration projects every year in multi-vendor and multi-technology environments, and is the clear market leader in real-time charging with more than 280 charging and billing customers globally.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Vodafone India
Vodafone India is a 100% fully owned subsidiary of the Vodafone Group Plc. with operations across the country serving over 170 million customers. Commencing operations in 2007, Vodafone in its long-term commitment to India, has built a robust business in a highly competitive and price sensitive market. Vodafone India has been providing innovative, customer friendly and reliable products and services by continuously differentiating itself with a strong brand, best quality network, unique distribution and great customer service. This has been acknowledged at several prestigious forums where Vodafone India has won awards and recognition across different segments consistently.
Serving the needs of businesses, Vodafone Business Services provides total telecommunications (Voice and Data) solutions across mobility and wireline platforms. With the advantage of global expertise and experience and the knowledge of local markets, the business is run through the following verticals - Vodafone Global Enterprise (VGE), National Corporate (NC), Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) and a dedicated vertical for Government customers. Vodafone Business Services has steadily taken leadership position and is currently providing both mobile and wireline services to global and national businesses equipped with a robust and superior network infrastructure and a 24x7 NOC.
As a value based organization, Vodafone is committed to achieving the highest standards of Health, Safety and Well-being not only for its employees but also for all its partners. For creating such a responsible culture in the organization, the company received the Golden Peacock Occupational Health & Safety Award 2013. At Vodafone, sustainability is an integral part of the companys mission and strategy, shaping the conduct of business every day. Vodafone Cares is a platform to showcase all the good that Vodafone does for the society and has championed several projects and initiatives under the three pillars of Education, Environment and Empowerment. The Vodafone Foundation in India is committed to leverage the potential of mobile technology to address some of Indias most pressing challenges relating to education, health, equality and access. Its activities focus on the 4Ms of empowering individuals - m Health, m Education, m Agriculture and m Women.
Vodafone is one of the worlds largest telecommunications companies with over 435 million customers in its controlled and jointly controlled markets as of June 30, 2014. Vodafone has equity interests in telecommunications operations in nearly 30 countries and around 50 partner networks worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.vodafone.com. Follow us
