The Chinese are coming (and this time they're going to sell you software)

The tier one contract win is a biggy for AsiaInfo, giving it an important foothold in the European market. The order involves a comprehensive ‘transformation’ of most of Telenor’s BSS estate, according to Alex Hawker, AsiaInfo’s General Manager and Vice President, EMEA.

Hawker says the replacement system is fully-integrated and cloud-ready. It incorporates proprietary billing, customer relationship management, and real-time analytics software - all part of AsiaInfo’s Veris Cloud BSS solution, which currently serves more than 890 million users in Asia.

And NFV support? The system is Cloud-based and uses industry standard blades and Linux. “It’s incredibily scalable already so I don’t think NFV would be a problem - it’s just not part of this project,” said Hawker.

“We’re talking about replacing 100 separate systems, from mediation, rating and billing, to real-time analytics,” said Hawker. The goal, he said, was to transform the Telenor environment to one that would support real-time self-service for customers. “Telenor is moving from a mobile voice to a data environment where real time operation of all the services becomes important, so you have to reinvent the interaction with your customers. What you end up with is a single converged system folding in pre- and post-paid, voice and data, consumer and business.

Hawker said AsiaInfo was able to use its BSS expertise in serving the needs of the very largest mobile telcos in the world in Asia and says the company won a gruelling selection process, mostly because it had spent two year ‘productising’ and repurposing the software for the European market.

The contract is for the Danish bit of Telenor only, but the telco has seven operating subsidiaries which will no doubt be in Hawker’s sights when and if AsiaInfo makes a success of the initial deployment.