Narus going mobile with mediation

The quest for ways to drive revenue out of mobile services and to convince wireless operators to offer them continued this week as Palo Alto-based Narus introduced its MobileSight mediation solution.

Competition and a growing but healthy disdain for hype in the OSS space has been prompting software vendors to prove their new solutions in the market before announcing them publicly. Narus brought its new mediation solution to market this week with unnamed U.S. mobile operators and KDDI, a Japanese 3G mobile operator as customers offering personalized content services.

“We’re not in a future mode anymore. Personalized mobile services are here,” said Sue Forbes, vice president of solutions marketing and business development at Narus.

MobileSight, a mobile mediation engine that runs on Narus’ convergent mediation platform, uses interactive software modules to talk to both mobile network elements and business applications for voice and data networks.

The core technology behind MobileSight is called charging gateway functionality (CGF). The CGF collects data streams from various vendors' equipment then filters, aggregates and correlates it for use in billing records. It provides information at the individual customer level and permits testing, or trailing, of new services. The CGF also works in pre-paid and post-paid environments.

With mounting delays in the deployment of 3G, Narus is positioning its solution as a transition enabler between legacy infrastructures and next generation networks. “Most operators are asking for data [mediation] whether its 2.5G or 3G,” Forbes said.

MobileSight helped KDDI begin billing for content on a URL level for its EZweb content-based services, which include multimedia services, photos, maps and information services such as news and sports. “We got their service up and running in around eight months,” Forbes said.