i-conX, the world’s fastest growing interconnect solutions vendor, has announced that Belgian operator BASE is the latest customer to complete the implementation of the i-conX
a-s-p interconnect billing service.

Part of the KPN European enterprise covering the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, BASE serves 3.4m customers and is currently the fastest-growing mobile operator in Belgium, having acquired 590,000 new subscribers during 2008.

BASE has implemented the i-conX solution as part of a project to replace and upgrade its existing interconnect billing system. i-conX’s intuitive design, interfacing and reporting capabilities, as well as real-time accessibility to billing information, secured the switchover and the core implementation was achieved to a 10 week timescale with additional interfaces configured in the following months.

“Interconnect information management and billing has always been a tedious task. Today, a tailored solution has been conceived: i-conX,” said BASE Interconnect Manager, Christine Vanoppen. “i-conX is a comprehensive and user friendly environment. When adding high levels of accuracy and flexibility, trust is being created. It is thanks to this trust that BASE can now focus on its core business.”

The i-conX system allows telcos to bill, reconcile and maximise the margins generated by its wholesale connections and is specially designed to cater for complex rating rules and all known traffic types, including content. Furthermore, because the i-conX solution is fully integrated within BASE’s systems’ architecture, interfacing with the Company’s financial accounting system (SAP), data warehouse and revenue assurance module, it helps to protect BASE from revenue leakage, making its interconnect business intrinsically more profitable.

“The BASE project has been highly rewarding given that the replacement of a legacy system – especially in more mature markets like Belgium – always presents a greater challenge owing to the intricacies involved,” said i-conX Vice President Sales and Marketing, Gavin Stewart. “We were especially proud to be informed that BASE announced the i-conX deployment as one of its top achievements in 2008.

“Our a-s-p platform presents a new, much more flexible approach for operators looking to migrate from redundant systems and processes. This can now be achieved with minimal disruption to business processes thanks to a clear and logical migration path, which helps to ‘erase’ operators’ former fears of the risks associated with the ‘big switchover’.”

The i-conX system has the functionality to deal with the types of complications that can typically occur when upgrading existing interconnect systems, as well as specific regional anomalies. Some of the more demanding elements of the BASE project included overcoming Belgium’s complex voice interconnect agreements, full number portability and issues surrounding MMS/SMS accounting.

Certainly one of the most challenging aspects however, was working around Belgium’s incumbent agreements, which are some of the most complex in Europe. As well, BASE presented extremely rich EDR formats which required sophisticated pre-processing by the i-conX system.

For further information visit www.i-conxsolutions.com