U Mobile signs 5 year contract with Ericsson for BSS

U Mobile has signed a five-year business support systems (BSS) transformation and managed services contract with Ericsson.

Under the contract, U Mobile's complete BSS architecture will be transformed into a real-time convergent environment.

The five-year managed services contract will allow the Malaysian operator to focus its efforts on product development, and at the same time have clearer visibility and more control over capital and operating expense.

Upon completion of the transformation, it will become the first Malaysian operator to offer full-fledged convergent support to its subscribers, and will also be in a position to offer its customers more innovative services.

The convergent charging solution, based on Ericsson's charging system and BSCS iX, will be deployed and integrated with the existing U Mobile infrastructure.

With the BSS transformation, the operator will expand its services such as real-time promotions and notifications, product and services cross bundling, real-time cost control for postpaid subscriptions, subscriber personalization and flexible mobile wallets.

More than 1 million U Mobile prepaid, postpaid and hybrid customers will be migrated onto the new platform.

''U Mobile will realize a complete standardization and modernization of billing architecture that will ultimately allow us to offer our subscribers more personalized products and, therefore, a higher quality of user experience,'' said Kaizad Heerjee, U Mobile's CEO.

''U Mobile customers should look forward to new and unique offerings, and an even better customer service experience,'' said Janne Laitala, head of Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Ericsson will be responsible for business process consulting, competence development, solution design, deployment and systems integration of the convergent billing solution, as well as managed services.