LHS, a leading provider of telecommunications billing and customer care systems has won the “Overall – Best contribution to billing” at the IIR’s World Billing Awards 2006 second year in a row. The World Billing Awards acknowledge best billing practice and raise awareness of how significant billing, charging, IT and associated processes are to the communications industry. LHS was selected for its efforts in supporting IMS and all-IP billing. In the category “Best billing implementation” LHS earned second place.

“We are delighted to acknowledge LHS as winner in the ‘Overall – Best Contribution to Billing’ category for their development work on IMS-ready products.” said Hugh Roberts, Chairman of the Awards Judging Panel and Consultant Director for IIR’s BSS/OSS and RM events. “This year for the first time we took the unusual step of imposing an additional last minute requirement on the finalists in the ‘Overall’ category – and it was significant that each of them chose to highlight a different aspect of their value proposition as the most compelling. It was interesting to us that only one of the finalists mentioned the need to confront and overcome the challenges of IMS and all-IP billing – and that company was LHS.”

LHS recognized the trend towards IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) very early. IMS is a layered horizontal network architecture based on IP standards enabling network operators to offer all kinds of new services to their customers, independent from the type of network access or device used. LHS has managed to cope with the requirements and challenges of IMS and all-IP billing, and taken the industry lead by integrating its key charging and accounting protocol Diameter into its product portfolio. This enables carriers on-line and offline billing in an all-IP environment.

“This award is recognition by our peers of our billing and customer care system,” said Arnaud Lassalle, Vice President Marketing and Communications at LHS. “We have a strong product strategy based on customer and market requirements, and a future-oriented market vision, with particular focus on IMS and IP. We’re delighted that our efforts and approach have been recognized.”

About LHS
LHS is a leading provider of telecom billing and customer care systems across the wireless, wireline, and IP telecom markets worldwide. Our deep industry knowledge and world-class Business Support Systems are leading the race for convergence, supporting the complete range of business models across the mix of prepaid and post-paid services. LHS builds innovative systems that enable our customers to introduce new services fast, helping drive revenues up, while keeping operational costs to a minimum. LHS was awarded “Best Billing or Customer Care Solution” by the GSM Association in Cannes in 2005, and won the IIR World Billing Awards for its “Overall Best Contribution to Billing” in London in 2005 and 2006. LHS is an independent software vendor (ISV) with headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, and offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Dubai, UAE. For more information, please visit www.lhsgroup.com