The Story of a Leading Mobile Telco Operator in West Africa

Our Customer is a leading mobile telco operator in Western Africa with over 1.6 million subscribers. They were pushing forward access to telecommunication services across the country, despite difficult market conditions. This small African country received no attention and had very small investments in communication infrastructure. Our customer was the first operator in its country to launch 3G (HSPA+) services following by 4G-LTE services in 2016.

Operators in Africa are always taking the risks to invest in new infrastructure and develop their markets

Typically, operators in Africa push to increase market share and revenues by developing and then offering new communication services. The natural evolution is from 3G GSM to 4G wireless broadband moving onto Internet of things (IoT) and Machine 2 Machine (M2M) connectivity. Our customer had this strategic development in mind when investing in the new 4G LTE infrastructure.

10 Challenges for BD Innovations

1. Our customer, the leading mobile tier 1 operator had obtained a 4G license (LTE) allowing them to provide their customers a high-speed quality broadband internet over a fixed wireless infrastructure. This new offering needed to be aligned with their current processes and provide a customer-facing process.
2. They wanted to make sure that with these new substantial investments in the 4G LTE fixed wireless network, they could provide broadband services and become a fixed wireless internet service provider that would increase revenues. They knew the 4G PCRF they needed to deploy will be used for implementing usage policy and charging rules.
3. The PCRF needed to be integrated with the existing billing IT infrastructure of the main GSM operation.
4. After the integration they could be both a cellular service provider and an internet service provider (2 PLAY).
5. They needed a Business Management Support System to support their new ISP operation and integrate it with GSM operations.
6. They expected to be able to combine customer service systems for the ISP together with the GSM operations. They needed one screen for each customer containing information on all the services they were using and paying for.
7. From a marketing perspective, they wanted to be able to offer internet and mobile phone services in a bundle with differentiated prices for consumers and businesses.
8. They needed flexible billing features for all marketing initiatives to gain market share.
9. A strict unprecedented 8-week deadline was set because Time-to-Market was critical.
10. Future growth required support for multiple services under Unified BSS.