LogicaCMG unveils 'Friends, Family and Beyond' data plan options for mobile operators

Advanced Rating introduces sophisticated new bundling and pricing options to operators' data plans, including a highly scalable version of the popular 'friends and family' billing model. LogicaCMG recently announced the sale of its Telecoms Products business to a consortium of private equity buyers, subject to employee consultation and regulatory approval. Once the transaction closes the Telecoms Products business will trade under the new brand, Acision (www.acision.com).

Advanced Rating's 'Friends, Family and Beyond' capability allows operators to support mobile data charging communities, groups that can be pre-defined by the operator or built by customers of participating operators. Mobile data community charging allows operators to offer highly customized, discounted service offerings to a wider variety of market segments including businesses, universities, shared interest groups, group blogging sites and other virtual and 'real' communities.

Nabil Y. Khalil, Director, Telecoms at LogicaCMG in the Middle East and North Africa said:

"With mobile voice services quickly reaching commodity pricing, operators are looking for more sophisticated ways of bundling and pricing data services to remain competitive. Designed to drive operator revenues while improving the end user experience, Advanced Rating allows mobile operators to maximize both revenue retention and service flexibility, making data bundling, 'friends and family' data plans and other sophisticated marketing strategies easy. With over US$100 billion of revenues processed by our payments systems globally, we have the necessary expertise to help operators achieve their future charging requirements."

Advanced Rating is a core element of LogicaCMG's Intelligent Charging offering, providing a sophisticated, real-time rating engine that ensures scalability and compatibility with existing prepaid and postpaid billing systems. Using Advanced Rating operators can more effectively manage and market both prepaid and postpaid mobile data services — making prepaid balances, postpaid credit limits and service-specific balances available to all of the operator's business support systems on an on-demand basis.

The new Advanced Rating 'Friends, Family and Beyond' capability is available in the latest releases of two key Intelligent Charging offerings:

Message Charger

Message Charger is a cost-effective pre-delivery rating and charging solution for operators looking to maximize messaging revenue streams or offer sophisticated messaging tariff plans. Highly scalable and reliable, Message Charger connects directly to existing prepaid and postpaid billing systems. It provides innovative and flexible rating and tariffing including message bundles, tiered pricing and off-peak rates. Unlike many existing IN approaches, Message Charger closes the hot billing fraud window and captures all message revenue, including MT premium and MO roaming.

Data Charger

The scalable and reliable pre-delivery Data Charger solution captures revenue for data services by time, volume, event or Pay-Per-Click, while ensuring excellent user experiences with improved availability, Advice of Charge and automatic refund services and intelligent handling of low- and no-credit prepaid situations. Data Charger is a secure, fraud-free solution that integrates completely with existing prepaid and post-paid systems. It features, among other things, real-time service access control and flexible rating capabilities.