CTIA: Telcordia on parade

LAS VEGAS--One of the most significant news items to come out of CTIA this week was the launch of Disney Mobile. That would make the most significant news for Telcordia the agreement it announced with Disney to support the launch with its Hosted MVNO solution.

Telcordia will host its Converged Application Server and Converged Real Time Charging software for Disney at its data center in Piscataway, N.J. Disney will use the platforms to enable the family-friendly usage controls in its Disney Mobile’s Family Monitor feature.

“They realize that to be successful as an MVNO, it’s all about feature richness. That’s where we are front and center,” said Doug Patterson, vice president of telecom services at Telcordia.

Usage controls allow parents to set spending allowances and limits on various wireless services. Using Telcordia’s Call Control function, parents also can control usage by the time of day.

“It allows mothers to be their own little FCC,” Patterson said.

The hosted solution model enables MVNOs like Disney Mobile to build wireless telecommunications services without having to own or manage a network. “Disney may be a [huge] corporation, but as an MVNO, they’re still a start-up,” Patterson said.

Scott Erickson, executive vice president of global sales and marketing for Telcordia, reiterated Disney’s message that that target market is not children, but families. “That’s why its all about dependable call management and call control,” he said.

Disney was not alone in announcing its choice of Telcordia this week for its hosted MVNO solution. But it was the only consumer-focused MVNO to do so. Flying J, a player in the highway hospitality services industry, has selected the Telcordia to support the launch of its prepaid wireless service targeted specifically at the nation’s transportation industry.

Flying J is the first enterprise company to deploy Telcordia’s hosted solution for launching an MVNO service. The Ogden, Utah-based oil corporation is among the top 30 in Forbes’ 500 largest private companies in America. It had more than $11 billion in revenue last year from its interstate operations, transportation, refining and supply, exploration and production and financial services and communications divisions.

For the Hosted Solution, Telcordia works closely with Sprint, who is providing access via its nationwide digital network.

On a separate note, Telcordia also expanded its relationship with mediation provider Openet Telecom. The companies will help advance the concept built into IP Multimedia Subsystem architectures that allows real-time billing for any service in any way at any time, but using Openet’s Fusionworks ActiveCharge to enhance Telcordia’s Converged Real-Time Charging solution.

The enhanced solution will track every stage of a transaction from ordering, through delivery and payment. It will ensure s that customers are only charged if the service request has been fulfilled and they have sufficient credit to complete a given transaction. The addition of active mediation allows subscribers to put in place a number of real-time controls over both prepaid and post-paid accounts. The Fusionworks ActiveCharge solution from Openet is an IMS-compliant Online Charging Systems that supports a wide set of standardized fixed, mobile and IP interfaces in the industry. With the addition of ActiveCharge, operators planning to adopt IMS can begin using the Telcordia Converged Real-Time Charging solution to converge prepaid and post paid services.