Two years later the CSP decides to purchase Bercut Call Center and Bercut SMS Center product.
What was unique about that delivery is that at that time they operated in the digital standard D-AMPS or Digital AMPS, i.e. in the frequency range from 400 to 890 MHz. It required that Bercut individually approach the solutions development to fit the operator’s standards. Later, the State Commission for Radio Frequencies obliged all Russian mobile operators to clear the 800 MHz band for digital television development in Russia, and operators transferred to the GSM-1800 network. Thus, SMS Center Bercut ended up operating in two standards — D-AMPS and GSM.
In 2004, the operator got two more products from Bercut’s portfolio – SPACE, a platform for managing access to partner content, and USSDC, Bercut’s high-performance messaging platform. Installation of those products allowed the CSP to enhance the customer services and facilitate connection for content providers. All this had a good effect on ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Having implemented a self-service channel and mobile marketing, the CSP discovered new opportunities for revenue growth.
The next step was to improve performance. Moving from industrial PCs to the SUN platform made it possible to send more than 1000 short messages per second, and the use of the SIGTRAN protocol designed for interaction of the traditional telephony and VoIP allowed to abandon using signal boards.
In 2012, the CSP obtained Ring Back Tone by Bercut (RBT). The value-added service allowed the subscribers to set recorded voice messages instead of standard beeps in one click. For efficient operation of RBT, it was deployed on Bercut’s internally developed Hybrid Integration Platform (HIP). The use of data integration bus enabled the CSP to independently carry out integrations, make business systems and processes more manageable, and cut time-to-market for comprehensive services to reach the subscribers. At the same time Voice Mail Service was upgraded to Call Catcher, that not only allowed the subscriber to record and store, but also to deliver voice messages. As a result, the CSP could manage the messages and user profiles.
In 2015, thanks to the update of UAN, it became possible to combine mobile numbers in mini PBX. This functionality was added for corporate customers who wanted to forward incoming calls from a single number to several subscribers.
In 2019 Bercut was chosen the supplier for complete replacement of the billing system, having offered the best value for money. The timing of installation surpassed all expectations of the customer. It took only 4 month to deploy, launch and test the new BSS.
As part of BSS replacement project, all the pre-installed solutions were updated and additional Bercut products were supplied as follows:
- convergent billing system IN@Voice for development of digital ecosystems and business monetization
- EXPERA business solution for providing subscribers with high-yield VAS
- Mobile Number Portability (MNP), a solution for quick transfer of subscriber number from one operator to another
- Policy and Charging Rules Function, a functional element in 3GPP networks (PCRF) that manages customer service policies
- Bercut Resource Management System (BRMS), a system for storing and managing information about SIM cards of the operator
- Service catalog
Three parties participated in the project – the operator, Bercut and an integration partner. The global migration took only 2 hours and 40 minutes, and was made without errors. In that time, 2,392,661 subscribers, 3,761,978 customers and 95 billing plans were transferred. The project was completed in record time and became the most successful migration to the IN@Voice billing. The installation of a new BSS allowed the CSP to abandon in-house development, thereby reducing risks and optimizing resources for billing maintenance.
Bercut supported the customer in terms of IN@Voice maintenance for 6 months. Technical specialists along with marketing and analysts participated in the project. At the regular workshops with the customer's teams the need for analytics and reporting was identified, and a wide range of tools for storing, building and evaluating analytical models of Business Intelligence & Analytics Suite was added to the CSP’s IT landscape. Thus, the task to handle and process big data for further use for marketing purposes was solved.
In May 2020, the CSP was the first among the competitors to launch the VoLTE technology for its subscribers. Prompt launch was possible due to EXPERA platform delivered by Bercut in 2019. Customized improvements of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) functions and online charging of voice services allowed to quickly introduce the technology, ahead of the competitors.
