Highdeal & AOL Deal
June 02, 2005 - Blog: Highdeal & AOL Deal
Highdeal & AOL Deal
Highdeal Transactive a leading pricing and rating software suite for mobile, IP and multimedia services has been selected to support AOL’s recently launched consumer VoIP service – AOL Phone. AOL Germany is one of Germany's leading Internet companies and part of the world's biggest media company Time Warner.
As part of its strategy, AOL Germany took the decision to broaden its product portfolio by introducing IP Telephony services for the German residential market. Compared to other German service providers, the new service, AOL Phone, is set to deliver a sophisticated and easy to set up VoIP solution. In addition, AOL Phone enables consumers to save enormously on their phone costs compared to other classic telco providers. This offer is available to existing AOL subscribers as well as to all customers using another Internet Service Provider (ISP).
To launch their service, AOL required a flexible pricing and rating engine that enabled the creation of versatile price plans. AOL was also looking for a solution with the ability to rapidly deploy offers in line with market demands, while also having the flexibility to easily accommodate to future offers built into the product portfolio. Highdeal Transactive’s robust software suite easily met these requirements enabling the delivery of advanced, complex tariff structures, while addressing cost and payment control for the end user.Highdeal Transactive’s ‘decision tree’ technology was very appealing, as it provided high flexibility and performance. Being able to use a single rating engine for all different payment and price plans tipped the scales in favor of Highdeal” said Jens Pape, Vice President Technology & Operations, AOL Germany. He added, “In order to reach high customer loyalty and ARPU, the ability to create flexible price plans and rate for convergent services were absolutely critical.” AOL Germany’s offers included a complex service mix providing different payment mechanisms. The pricing also takes into account calls to specific numbers, such as 0800 numbers, or calls between AOL Phone customers. The offers launched were as follows:
AOL Phone® Fun Tariff: a pay as you go price plan with no subscription for AOL ISP customers, installation costs or contractual commitment. Local calls are billed at 1.5 cents per minute and international calls from 4.5 cents per minute
AOL Phone® FreeWeekend: a € 6,90 monthly subscription which includes free local calls over the weekend and nationwide bank holiday with weekday use charged at the ‘Fun Tariff’ offer
AOL Phone® Flat: €19,90 monthly subscription includes unlimited calls into German fixed network (calls to mobiles and abroad are charged)
Due to its modular design, Highdeal Transactive is easily integrated into the billing system as an add-on component to AOL’s existing back-office architecture. An important prerequisite for Highdeal Transactive was the integration with the residential communication solution from NetCentrex which is used to manage the AOL’s VoIP calls. Due to their open architectures, Highdeal Transactive and the NetCentrex softswitch were seamlessly pre-integrated.
Eric Lavenir, Vice President Sales EMEA from Highdeal: "We are assisting ISPs like AOL in Germany to create revenues and successfully enter new markets. ISPs and telcos share similar concerns, to secure revenues in a market with significant customer churn. Increased ARPU and constant diversification is key, to successfully compete in these markets. Highdeal Transactive is specifically designed for next generation services, providing native convergence capabilities for both services and payment mechanisms.” |
