TAL
hs
(Wireless Telecommunications)
Contact:
TAL hs
www.tal.is
Rational Software
www.rational.com
Kabira Technologies
www.kabira.com
Iona Software
www.iona.com
Tools used:
Kabira ObjectSwitch; Rational Rose; IONA Orbix
Description:
TAL has been providing commercial GSM wireless
service since May 5th 1998. This was a historic day for Icelandic mobile
phone users; TAL was the first company to break the monopoly of Iceland
Telecom (Landssiminn) in the area of telecommunication. In April 1999
TAL bought Islandia Internet, creating a commercial combination of
wireless telecommunications and Internet services. TAL's customers enjoy
a rich offering of GSM communications, pre-paid services, SMS , GPRS and
Internet access -- a true 2.5G set of wireless offerings.
Problem:
The introduction of next generation mobile networks and
services including GPRS has resulted in an order of magnitude increase
in complexity at every level of a service provider's network. This
complexity extends from the network switching level through the OSS ,
including mediation and provisioning systems - and BSS , such as mobile
commerce, content and billing systems.
At the same time, TAL's business plan
calls for rapidly bringing a continuous supply of new services to
market. Traditional IT methods of hand coding don't allow for a high
level of efficiency for the deployment of news services. Specifically,
TAL needed to deploy pre-paid GPRS to its customers in record time. Yet,
most of the 3rd party suppliers required a wait of many months and
charged for numerous extra licensing charges for new software and
equipment.
Solution:
TAL chose the
following solutions - (1) Kabira ObjectSwitch , a provider of
infrastructure software for revenue-generating convergent services over
the Internet, broadband and wireless networks was chosen by TAL to solve
the problem of speed to market and cost efficiency to offer its
customers high level wireless service. (2) Rational Rose , a leading UML
modeling tool was used for development in conjunction with Kabira
ObjectSwitch. (3) IONA Orbix was used for industry standard, OMG CORBA
interfacing between software and hardware.
Kabira's ObjectSwitch software platform integrates all levels of its
network systems and aggregates them into one cohesive system view. This
enabled TAL to generate and bill for new applications and services and
to introduce the world's first pre-paid GPRS network to access those
services. Furthermore, Kabira ensures that TAL has the ability to
rapidly accommodate inevitable but presently unknown new services and
functionality.
ObjectSwitch enables these new
services to be created quickly due to high-level UML models. By using
standard UML models designed in Rational Rose and the Kabira platform,
TAL's IT department was one of the first in the world to bring pre-paid
GPRS services to its customers. "UML was chosen for service engine
development because it is the most powerful, standard model for the
definition of services containing objects, state and event
controls," said Dirk Epperson, Kabira's Vice President of Product
Strategy.
Kabira's ObjectSwitch software
platform also enables next generation service providers to both create
and deploy new services while leveraging their investment in current
network and services infrastructure. It meets the carrier-grade
requirements of performance, scalability and high availability.
"We cannot afford to rely on conventional tools to compete in
today's market, particularly with limited engineering resources,"
said Óskar B. Hauksson, Information Technology Director of TAL.
"The Kabira platform allows us to rapidly build, provision and
collect revenue for the most innovative GPRS services, enabling us to
maximize our engineering productivity and provide our customers with the
most compelling services faster than our competitors."
Consumer & Business Benefits:
End customers in Iceland benefit directly from the availability of
pre-paid GPRS, pre-paid SMS and reliable, innovative services. All of
Iceland benefits from having multiple competitive carriers and the most
modern services available in the marketplace.
Financial improvements were largely based upon lower cost-to-deploy and
earlier revenue-generation ability. Many months of delays were avoided
by using UML and Kabira ObjectSwitch. TAL's IT department and system
integrators required far less time than a normal project would require.
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