U Mobile has extended its existing partnership with Ericsson in a bid to transform the Malaysian telecoms carrier’s BSS into an industrialized, real-time converged environment.
U Mobile has been partnered with Ericsson for BSS since 2012 and the latest contract extension runs for five years, until 2022, the Swedish vendor said in a statement.
In the ongoing partnership, Ericsson is responsible for competence development, solution design, deployment and systems integration of the convergent billing solutions, as well as managed services.
With Ericsson's BSS solution, U Mobile can offer a wider range of unique services including real-time promotions and notifications, product and services cross bundling, real-time cost control for postpaid subscriptions, subscriber personalization, and flexible mobile wallets.
As part of the extended deal, U Mobile has also contracted Ericsson to manage its 5 million-plus prepaid and postpaid subscribers. The five-year managed services contract allows U Mobile to focus its efforts on product development while having clearer visibility and more control over capital and operating expenses, Ericsson said.
"U Mobile prides ourselves for always being the first in the country to roll out unique plans and services. To successfully do so, apart from having an unlimited commitment to innovate, we need to ensure that we actively reduce time to market in a way that would not affect customer experience,” U Mobile CEO Wong Heang Tuck said. “Ericsson's billing solutions has played a role in enabling our customers to enjoy our new services more quickly and efficiently."
Todd Ashton, head of Ericsson Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, said the company’s end-to-end convergent billing and managed services will help U Mobile strengthen its competitiveness, enable flexibility to meet market demands, and reduce costs through streamlined operations.
Ashton said more than 200 telecoms operators worldwide have deployed Ericsson’s billing and charging solutions, and two billion subscribers are now supported by its BSS offerings.