Swisscom’s prepaid billing system: A case of successful project and solid partnership

Customer description

Swisscom AG is Switzerland’s leading telecoms company and one of its foremost IT companies, carrying more than 60% of fixed-line minutes and 59% of the country’s wireless subscribers. According to the Swiss Federal Communications Commission, Swisscom holds the largest market share in mobile, prepaid and postpaid markets in Switzerland, accounting for approximately 55% of the mobile market, 64% of the postpaid market and more than 2.1 million prepaid subscribers. Swisscom focuses on service and quality and invests massively in the networks of the future, following its vision to be the best partner in the networked world and allow its customers to feel secure and at ease, and to achieve the extraordinary.

R Systems contribution and solution

In support of this objective, throughout the long-term partnership with Swisscom, R Systems has acted as the tech counterpart and consultant, devoting efforts to make clear recommendations, provide options and deliver the best technical solutions. R Systems has been a trusted provider for a variety of services and solutions in the most complex and demanding projects. Due to its solid expertise in prepaid and online charging and billing, R Systems has defined its key role as major supplier of Swisscom’s prepaid billing system (prepaid stack). The prepaid stack, which includes subscriber provisioning, reloads, billing and customer agent graphical user interfaces (GUI), is a highly sensitive platform, processing critical data. Daily over 5 million chargeable events are processed online, with the system capacity to handle 500 events per second. Given that potential system failure or malfunctions can result in loss of service for the subscribers and loss of revenue for the operators, carrier grade is an essential requirement of the system translating into high reliability, well tested and proven capabilities. In relation to the Swisscom prepaid stack, R Systems provides a full range of services, from system architecture and design to testing and maintenance and support.

Customer benefits

According to John Bonne, Head of Prepaid and Online Charging Department,

R Systems has a lot of know-how concentrated around online charging and prepaid; not only do they have a lot of knowledge and experience in this area but also in the adjacent domains of mobile telecoms. A lot of companies claim to have this, but R Systems has proven it.

As core system, the prepaid stack interacts with Swisscom’s intelligent network (IN), home location register (HLR) and elements of the OSS, therefore during the design phases, the R Systems team works closely with Swisscom solution designers and application owners. Speaking about the collaboration with the R Systems team, John Bonne stated:

I very much appreciate R Systems’ openness and flexibility to adapt to our changing needs. They are responsive to our queries and pro-active in making suggestions for improvement, yet they are patient with the processes within our organization.

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