BT and Amdocs are working together on a dynamic way of charging for cloud services. Under the scheme, BT will be able to vary prices according to time of day and offer customers discounts if they use off-peak resources.
The companies are demonstrating their project at the TMForum’s Management World conference in Nice this week. BT and Amdocs were showing off the project in the catalyst section of the show, in which operators and vendors work on new service ideas.
They hope to develop it further in time for the organisation’s conference in Orlando at the end of the year, to allow customers a self-service function, Amdocs executive Guy Hilton told Global Telecoms Business in Nice.
“Operators are wondering how they can bill for cloud services and improve the customer experience,” said Hilton.
In the demonstration at Nice, BT and Amdocs showed how they can cap the service for a small or medium enterprise so that the customer is warned when it approaches its monthly spend limit. “You have visibility of what’s going on,” said Hilton, and the operator can offer the customer an improved service or the chance to top-up the payment. “And the finance department can see the spend.”
The demonstration also showed how an operator can offer discounts on current or future service if it falls below a certain service level. “We don’t manage the SLA but if the quality drops you can be billed at a reduced rate,” said Hilton.
The system will allow dynamic pricing, he add. “An operator can set a range of prices and the system will set the price at any given moment depending on a range of parameters.” That will allow an operator to vary pricing according to demand, he explained.
 
 
Smart catalogue
 
The Croatian operation of Deutsche Telekom is working with Telcordia and local systems integrator GDI Systems on a smart way of bundling services into a catalogue, so customers can be offered the best available for their location.
Hrvatski Telekom — or Croatian Telekom — plans to go live with the new system on June 1, GDI’s CEO Zoran Kehler told Global Telecoms Business in the catalyst section of the TMForum’s Management World conference in Nice.
“The dynamic services catalogue allows the operator to be agile and put a link between sales and marketing and what is actually in the catalogue,” said Kehler.
“For example, if a customer wants a 10 megabit broadband connection, you can offer a bundle based on what’s on offer — such as UMTS, copper or fibre,” he said. “If the district is being converted to fibre-to-the-home, it will show that and offer it.” The information will be shown by the system “so the sales person does not have to have it all in their head”.
Telcordia is a strategic partner in the project. GDI is a Croatian owned company but is now based near Washington DC in the US, said Kehler, who is hoping that other divisions of Deutsche Telekom will look at using the system after Hrvatski Telekom goes live with it. “Croatian customers will be getting their invoices from it after June 1,” he added.
 
 
Emergency networks
 
Nato is sponsoring a project to allow telecoms operators to work together to set up emergency communications networks in cases of national or international disasters.
The North Atlantic military alliance is revealing details of the project in the catalyst section of the TMForum’s Management World conference in Nice this week.
“Each operator sets up its own network and they have their own vendors and there is no common network management,” said Dana Alexe, VP for systems engineering at Dax Technologies, one of the partners in the Nato project.
The project is being driven through IPsphere, the network standards organisation which is now part of the TMForum, and could have commercial applications outside the defence and emergency services world, said Mark Watson, VP of product management at Square Hoop, another of the partners.
“Nato is the champion but it can be applied to a general commercial network,” said Watson.
IPsphere is working with Telus, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom and Telenor on the project, he added. GTB