Our customer Softbank Mobile, a major Japanese mobile operator with 19 million subscribers, selected OpenCloud Rhino to implement an important new service offer directed at its corporate customer base. With mobile telephony comprising a significant and increasing portion of an enterprise’s communications budget, and with new premium mobile services being made available, company CFOs are increasingly looking to cap and control their mobile spend. In addition, particularly in mature mobile markets, mobile operators are looking to find attractive “sticky” offers that help retain valued customers and so avoid the high costs with customer acquisition and customer churn.

Softbank Mobile has implemented a multiple number, single phone/single identify service using OpenCloud Rhino. The service is live and is targeted at enterprise customers. It allows two or more subscriptions to be associated with a single phone and for the calling, messaging and data usage to be partitioned according to the dialled number, dialling number. Other rules can also be implemented such as location-based rules, whether the subscriber is roaming, the time of day, day of week etc.

OpenCloud Rhino’s comprehensive support for the different telecommunications protocols and the low-latency handling of the call/session signalling means that the calling rules can be invoked in real-time, within the call and the right subscription account (whether pre or post-paid) can be charged.

The service keeps enterprise mobile telephony costs under control, is convenient for the user as they do not have to carry multiple devices and is an attractive, sticky service. For the mobile operator, there is the additional benefit of acquiring and retaining a large number of personal subscriptions in addition to the enterprise/ business subscribers.