Pactolus supports Primus calling card services

Primus Canada brought its pre-paid calling card service in-house with the deployment of Pactolus’ SIPware Post Paid and Prepaid Calling Card services platform announced this week. The Canadian carrier also is using the platform for post-paid service.

In partnership with softswitch supplier Telica, Primus is using its SIP-based platform to deliver both payment options for long-distance calling to Primus TDM-based customers.

Telica is supplying its Plexus 9000 media gateway and softswitch. Lucent announced its intent to acquire Telica last month.

Primus is live on the Pactolus platform after picking the supplier a couple of months ago to provide calling card services on their converged network and to bring an outsourced pre-paid solution in-house. Pactolus has another unannounced Tier 1 customer in the U.S.

"It’s more compelling from an economic value proposition to be doing this in-house, especially with the IP component," said Ken Osowski, vice president of marketing and product management at Pactolus.

Both pre-paid and post-paid services are being delivered using the same platform. The SIPware platform also supports conference calling, broadband telephony, voice mail and automatic call distribution capabilities.

Osowski said the SIP-based platform scalability from extremely low-end platforms through very high-end platforms at a very cost-effective price. "SIP also gives you a lot more software control over features and that is what has accelerated the adoption of this technology," he said.