CTIA: Telcordia launches hosted solution with Movida MVNO

NEW ORLEANS--Telcordia Technologies got into the hosted solutions game this week and announced its participation in the upcoming launch of Movida, an MVNO targeting the Hispanic market in the U.S.

Movida, another Sprint-supported MVNO, announced its intent to provide service last month and will begin sometime in the first half of this year. It will use Telcordia's ISCP system for real-time call management for its pre-paid subscriber base. Telcordia's ISCP tracks user balances and can allow or tear down calls.

The ISCP itself is deployed worldwide in both wireline and wireless networks, including with Sprint's flagship MVNO, Virgin Mobile USA, which licenses the product. Movida, which will target the 40-million Hispanics through a distribution relationship with Wal-Mart, is the first to deploy Telcordia's Hosted Solutions offering. "They are a standalone business, not just a simple brand extension," said Doug Patterson, vice president of product management for hosted solutions at Telcordia. "They are not looking for just a small number of customers to augment another business. They have a very aggressive marketing plan of their own and we'd like to see more of that."

The hosted solutions group within Telcordia is just less than one year old. It will host the ISCP in its Piscataway, NJ., location with a mirrored site in Louisiana. The Hosted Solution features real-time call management, which helps eliminate the risk of fraud and reduces the upfront capital investment in technical infrastructure for potential MVNOs. The hosted version is fully integrated at Sprint.

As a high-capacity platform used for 800 number-services and other applications with multiple customers running on it, the ISCP was ideally suited for a hosting environment, said Cathy McMahon, executive director of product management for hosted solutions at Telcordia. "We are taking a proven call-control product that has been operating successfully in networks worldwide for over 25 years and applying it to the MVNO space," McMahon said.

While its initial focus will be on supporting MVNOs, the group plans to expand its hosted offerings to other emerging markets including cable and VoIP. The group also plans to expand the hosted solution suite to include OSS functionality, but will offer that primarily to emerging customers.

"As we get into other OSS applications, we want to address new, emerging opportunities; we don't plan to go out and compete by repackaging what we sell today as a new pricing model," Patterson said. "We want to satisfy ourselves that we can combine with other partners to bring a new business model to an emerging industry."