Azure Solutions, the revenue-assurance company, today announced that BT Global Services has implemented an inter-party billing solution (IXBS NG), based on Azure Interconnect version 9.0, for billing on its BT Switchless Reseller Service.

The BT Switchless Reseller Service enables business ventures (resellers) that don’t have their own network to sell voice access and termination services to their own subscriber base.  Using BT’s national and international networks, resellers can establish their own brand and take on the retail billing and customer care responsibility of their subscribers. The service is available to BT Global Services customers in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and Spain.

The inter-party billing solution will enable BT Global Services to invoice resellers at wholesale rates for subscriber access, network access and services.  Call detail records (CDRs) are then passed onto individual resellers enabling them to retail bill their own subscribers. The initial implementation is already live in Germany and the remaining countries will follow shortly.

Azure Interconnect 9.0 collects CDRs allowing operators to analyse call data, bill more accurately and verify the traffic usage of other partners across their networks.  Azure Interconnect 9.0 recently set an interconnect benchmarking world record of processing 90 million CDRs per hour using a 16-way HP server 32GB RAM, which easily meets the requirements of tier-1 operators.

“The number of resellers and virtual-network operators is continuing to grow strongly around the world,” said Brendan Logan of Logan Orviss International, the specialist telecoms consultancy.  “The operators who put together a combination of the right commercial package and the best billing and OSS will be in prime position to win new business in this market.”

Steven Webb, voice product business partner at BT, said: “The inter-party solution will be of great benefit to BT and our wholesale business customers.  It is the first deployment of the system in BT and its scalability will enable us to roll it out across the whole of our European network.”

Saul Nurtman, senior vice-president of products at Azure Solutions, said: “This is a great endorsement of Azure’s products and software from a tier-one operator.  BT’s European reseller customers will now be able to fully benefit from BT’s heavy investment in IXBS NG and its networkexpertise and technology.  This in turn will enable resellers to bill their subscribers more effectively.”