TELECOM

Case 1 - Large Cellular Operator, Mexico

Case 2 - A Major Telecom Service Provider in India

Case 3 - US Broadband Internet Access Provider

Case 1:
Customer: Large Cellular Operator, Mexico
Technology: Business Intelligence

The Customer

The customer is one of the largest cellular service providers in Mexico with 700,000 customers and more than one million connections across 11 cities in Mexico, offering a variety of prepaid and postpaid services. The customer also distributes mobile handsets from various vendors through direct and indirect sales channels.

The Challenge

With massive expansion plans on the cards, the customer needed a Business Intelligence solution that would help it to use its operational data effectively to retain customers and increase their market share and airtime. The customer needed a system that could assist them in analyzing the usage patterns of customers based on various factors like rate plans, origin and destination of calls and types of calls. The analysis would assist them in understanding customer preferences, equipping them with information needed to broaden their customer base and increase market share and revenue.

The Solution

Tata Infotech has a telecom-specific Business Intelligence solution - BI4tel (Business Intelligence for Telecom). The solution offers key advantages, such as a telecom-centric data model, reduced costs and quick results. The implementation of BI4tel involved the effectuation of KPIs in call usage and churn areas. The Call Usage KPIs help in analyzing airtime in terms of number of calls, real and billed seconds, while the Churn KPIs enable auditing of customer cancellations. BI4tel also provides for dynamic generation of standard reports in a matter of seconds.

The Benefits

With the BI4tel solution in place, the customer is now in a position to create attractive rate plans to increase airtime and revenues. It can concentrate on improving product sales by identifying those products preferred by customers. Further, it is in a position to determine the usage and cancellation patterns of different segments of customers, and the reasons for the same, thereby enabling them to take timely precautionary measures.

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Case 2:
Customer: A Major Telecom Service Provider in India.
Technology: Network Security Audit

The Customer

The customer is a major telecom service provider in India. It has around 450 nodes running through the length and breadth of the country. The customer has deployed a National Internet backbone (NIB) for providing Internet Access Points (IAPs) to private ISPs and Points of Presence (POP's).

Services offered are PPP dial-up access (PSTN and ISDN), e-mail and dedicated leased lines. The customer follows a three-tier architecture. Nodes are categorized as "A", "B" and "C" depending on the capacity and configuration of equipment.

The Challenge

The NIB grew out of a need to connect remote Indian cities to the net. Primary focus was on operations and network maintenance, as a result, network security was accorded a low priority.

In the course of operations, the customer realized to keep their network running, they had to prevent it from internal and external attacks through a network security audit.

The service provider's primary aim was to get NIB audited for network and system security and to have a network security plan developed. The scope of work:

• To determine if the network infrastructure components and servers were secured from the configuration and operational perspective.
   
• To evaluate the effectiveness of management practices and operation tools.
   
• To recommend improvements for managing security, operation practices and tools

The Solution

Tata Infotech's audit covered an independent and detailed security review of internal procedures, the network topology, access controls, applications, databases, operating systems, network security inspections and other software and utilities. The audit was conducted through interviews with the customer's staff and a detailed verification of key security parameters using Tata Infotech's proprietary network security methodologies . Through the audit, Tata Infotech identified current security measures taken by the customer and gaps in security, which exposed the customer to security risks.

Tata Infotech recommended modifications such as enhanced router security, consolidation of access restrictions, system-wide security policy modifications, and system software and firmware upgrades, which would improve data control in the organization.

Tata Infotech also provided the customer with a network security design and plan.

The Benefits

A security assessment, which identified security threats to the network and solutions on how, these could be resolved.

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Case 3:
Customer: US broadband Internet access provider
Technology: eBusiness

The Customer

The Customer is a telecommunications company in USA that provides broadband internet access service to home internet users and small and medium-sized businesses for connecting to the net. The service is ultra-fast, affordable and "always on" and is based on DSL technology.

 
The Challenge

Traditionally the customer sold its services through channel partners. However, when it decided to expand its distribution channels, it opted to make use of its channel partners' websites. The website used to receive order requests from end-users, which needed to be fulfilled very quickly via the customer's internal systems.

The channel partners belonged to six categories. The categories were based on their technological and user interface requirements. Our customer had to redesign the web-based storefront in order to sell DSL services to retail customers. From the user interface perspective, the solution had to feature the reusable design of a storefront that would be easy-to-use and enable to client to create multiple partner sites.

 
The Solution

Tata Infotech designed and implemented the interface and connection to the internal systems, while Human Factors, created the user interface design.

The new system simplified the order process while facilitating orders through provision of DSL-related information.

The XML-based application-programming interface (API) enables "flow-through DSL provisioning" between the company and its channels partners to create a seamless supply chain. Channel partners can quickly and easily add DSL to their product portfolio, a feature critical for scaling up business.

Through xLink Server API, the solution could talk to the customer's internal business systems. The middle tier included a Java Servlet that could talk to the xLink API, a Log Handler for analysis of end user logs and a template engine to serve dynamically generated pages.

 
The Benefits

The solution is modular so that the customer can reuse most components in the future. It also helps the customer's marketing team to sell the co-branding idea to channel partners.

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