OpenCloud’s charging gateway supports Telkomsel’s 67 million subscribers
March 10 2009,
Cambridge, UK, 10th March 2009 – OpenCloud Limited, the supplier of real-time application server software for next-generation convergent telecommunications services, announces that its Rhino server, being utilised by Indonesian GSM operator Telkomsel to provide a charging gateway and charging mediation for all of its content and value-added services, has gone live. It is the largest JAIN SLEE implementation in the world comprising more than 20 clustered, fault-tolerant Rhino servers configured to support thousands of transactions per second. The live implementation of this carrier-grade platform in Asia’s fourth largest telecommunications network in November 2008 marks a significant milestone for the JAIN SLEE standard. This solution replaced the legacy in-house built charging gateway system. Since going live in November, the system has allowed Telkomsel to optimize operations and to cope with the typical increased traffic during the new year period, marking a successful project accomplishment.
Telkomsel currently has more than 67 million subscribers, and predict this figure to rise to beyond 80 million in 2009. With more than 50 per cent market share of the continuously growing Indonesian mobile market, Telkomsel’s GSM and 3G network and business operations are geographically dispersed, spanning the country’s thousands of islands. OpenCloud’s Rhino processes and verifies charges in real-time for event-based and session-based services, irrespective of the subscriber’s location within Indonesia. This system strengthens Telkomsel’s real-time charging capabilities and provides carrier grade high availability. This allows Telkomsel to avoid potential revenue loss problems which are often associated with pre-paid subscribers and third-party services. The new system answers challenges coming from a network footprint covering a geographical area comparable to whole of Europe, against a background of rapid growth and infrastructure challenges.
OpenCloud’s Rhino server is a carrier-grade asynchronous event-based architecture which ensures credit verification, charging and confirmation messaging can occur in real-time for both pre- and post-paid subscribers. The charging gateway was custom built by OpenCloud to meet the specific requirements of Telkomsel. Rhino is highly scalable and able to process thousands of transactions per second. Telkomsel chose Rhino for its continuous availability and ability to facilitate upgrades with zero downtime and for its proven performance reliability - essential to the network which has no capacity to fail.
Hanang Setiohargo, VP IT Development, Telkomsel commented, “It was clear to us that our unique network environment had specific challenges. We needed to work with a company that could help us support our massive and continuously growing subscriber base. The Rhino server provides the scalability and reliability we need for such a crucial implementation and we are very confident in its ability to grow with our own ambitious targets.”
Jeff Gordon, CEO of OpenCloud commented, “Telkomsel is one of the largest operators in the world with its strong reputation for innovation we are delighted that they have selected OpenCloud’s technology. By 2010, Ovum predicts that Indonesia will be third only to China and India for mobile messaging connections in Asia, but without resilient charging systems the additional traffic holds few benefits for operators. With real-time charging systems approving payments before service delivery Telkomsel is now able to continue to carve its reputation for service innovation confident that it is able to capture the revenues promised by new offerings.”
About PT Telekomunikasi Selular Tbk
Telkomsel is the service leader of cellular telecommunications services in Indonesia with 67 million customers or more than 50% market share. Telkomsel provides GSM cellular services in Indonesia, through its own nationwide Dual band 900/1800 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA network, and internationally, through 330 international roaming partner all over the world. Telkomsel is the first operator in Indonesia to launch 3G services in September 2006 and had the biggest 3G community with more than 6.2 million subscribers in more than 120 cities. Telkomsel has the largest network coverage of any of the cellular operators in Indonesia, providing network coverage to over 95% of Indonesia's population and is the only operator in Indonesia that covers all of the country's provinces and counties, and all sub-counties ("kecamatan") in Sumatra, Java, and Bali/Nusra Sumatra, Java, Bali, Nusa Tenggara and Kalimantan.
More information is available at: www.telkomsel.com
About OpenCloud
OpenCloud provides the telecommunications industry with Rhino – a real-time application server for agile development, deployment and efficient management of person-to-person communication services. OpenCloud Rhino is a high performance, genuinely carrier-grade service execution environment for traditional and Telco 2.0 services on TDM and IP-based networks It uses commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software to deliver service layer agility to networks at a radically lower price-point than traditional solutions from network equipment providers.
OpenCloud is headquartered in Cambridge, UK with R&D, Engineering and Support in New Zealand and Spain and branch offices in the US, Singapore and Japan.
www.opencloud.com
http://developer.opencloud.com to join OpenCloud’s growing developer community
Media contacts
OpenCloud:
Becky Kiely / Sarah Martinez
T: +44 (0) 8453 700 655