T-Mobile awards Narus with multi-million dollar contract

These worst of times suddenly don’t look so bad for mediation software provider Narus, which scored a sizeable deal with T-Mobile this week to provide solutions for the erstwhile VoiceStream’s GSM voice and data network in the U.S.

“It is a relatively big deal for us especially in this market. Not too many customers are buying and very few of them are buying multi-million dollar deals,” said Ori Cohen, chairman and co-founder of Narus.

The multi-million dollar contract calls for Narus to supply certain modules from its MobileSight mediation engine, which the company launched in August. Narus’ new charging gateway functionality (CGF) will be used to develop usage-based billing plans. T-Mobile will use Narus’ Symantec traffic analysis module for gaining visibility into subscribers’ transactions and application usage.

“It will also enable T-Mobile to fix some of their revenue leakage problems and launch some innovative mobile Internet applications and services,” Cohen said.

Although the contract calls for solutions in the U.S. only, T-Mobile has a strong presence in Europe as well. Narus also sold its MobileSight platform to Japanese 3G mobile operator, KDDI.

While T-Mobile indicated its choice was made due in part to the modular design of Narus’ platform and a short implementation time, Cohen said his company also provided the best price per IPDR (billing record.)

Cohen is not ready to call a turnaround, however. “The market remains very, very tough. Customers are becoming very smart on what they are spending money on,” he said.

Late last month, Narus entered into an agreement with NEC to include modules from MobileSight in a complete, carrier-grade mediation solution NEC will be offering to mobile providers in Asia and South America.