Effortel, one of Europe's leading MVNE/Os, was looking for a fast, affordable solution to challenge established players and develop new markets. Effortel selected the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite as a single, centralized convergent real-time billing and customer care and self-care platform to launch multiple low-cost mobile services in multiple countries. Amdocs has enabled Effortel to do this in a highly competitive market environment while significantly reducing time-to-market for new operations and services, and while reducing total cost of ownership. Effortel used the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite to support Carrefour, the world's number two supermarket retailer, in launching its1 Mobile brand, in weeks. Effortel launched another service in Italy, entirely in Chinese, in under two months. The Amdocs solution also means that additional promotions for these services, like free talk minutes, can be delivered to thousands of supermarket tills across Europe in days. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite gives Effortel a ready-made multi-tenant solution for supporting multiple MVNOs around the world, bringing reach functionality, low TCO and innovative low-cost mobile services to market very quickly.

At-a-Glance EFFORTEL SA Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium Website: effortel.com Stock Exchange: Privately held Employees: 50 Customers: Over 400K Industry: Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) and Operator (MVNO) Operations in: Belgium, Italy, Russia, Poland and Taiwan Challenge Saturated mobile market demands a fresh approach to providing innovative, affordable mobile services to customers Smaller MVNO's competing against large & established traditional mobile operators with large subscriber bases Market demanding low-cost & innovative mobile phone services & bundled packages Solution Amdocs Compact Convergence suite Results Helped Effortel establish a foothold in highly competitive markets Reduced time to market for new operations & mobile phone services from months to weeks and/or days Ability to deliver promotions directly to supermarket registers (tills) - for example, 50 million individual free talk-time codes to 20,000 supermarket tills Ability to support multiple MVNOs across different countries from a single location with minimal staff Technical ENVIRONMENT Amdocs Products: Amdocs Compact Convergence Suite Mobile Services: Voice, SMS, roaming, voicemail Business Services: Billing and invoicing, payment handling, financial reporting, and full customer care and self-care support Subscribers (current): 400,000 Subscriber capacity: 1.4 million and up to 10 million OS: Unix/Windows Integrations: To Mobile Network Operator's (MNO) switches

Amdocs helps leading MVNE/MVNO launch low-cost, innovative mobile services

Effortel SA operates as a Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) providing a full range of platform-based transaction processing and management services for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO), and acts as an MVNO itself for other businesses. Based in Brussels, Effortel's business strategy enables organizations to offer simple, useful and inexpensive telecom products to their customers. Products include all the key services: voice, SMS, roaming, voicemail; billing and invoicing, payment handling, financial reporting; and full customer care and self-care support. The MVNO model allows businesses to introduce highly competitive, low-cost mobile services quickly, because there are no infrastructure costs. These services effectively 'piggy back' on the network and cellular infrastructure of an established mobile service operator (MNO).

Saturated mobile phone market

In Belgium, where there is a highly competitive pre-paid market, Effortel worked with Carrefour to launch a new mobile brand - Carrefour 1 Mobile. With the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite, Effortel enabled Carrefour to launch the pre-paid service into its retail outlets with highly competitive consumer pricing. Customers have a 'pick up and pay' mobile phone service with different top up payment options and range of discounts and offers available at the checkout or via in store vending machines.

Effortel deployed the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite as a centralized platform that works in a distributed architecture and supports the remote, regional MVNO customer sites. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite provides an end-to-end solution that enables each MVNO to create and design new services, deliver them, charge for them and support them all while localizing and personalizing the service offering. The Amdocs solution enables many remote sites to be rolled out at little extra cost, thus reducing the need for additional infrastructure investment and reducing total cost of ownership.

Amdocs delivers an affordable, flexible and fast-to-market solution

"As we enable our MVNO customers to expand in new markets, we value the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite because it helps us operate more efficiently and cost-effectively, and is designed to help us better meet our customers' competitive goals to offer low-cost mobile phone services,"said Maarten Boute, Chief Executive Officer at Effortel. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite is a complete service enablement suite for MVNO/Es to quickly launch operations and innovative services with attractive pricing plans and promotions.

Effortel is using the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite to create, deliver and manage Carrefour's 1 Mobile brand, alongside other MVNOs, and to help deploy convergent charging and provide business support requirements. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite does all this from one multi-tenant hosted location supporting any network, any service and any payment method. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite allows Effortel and its network of MVNOs to realize low total cost of ownership, fast time-to-market and revenue, competitive differentiation and profitability.

Luidvikas Andriullis, Chief Marketing Officer at Effortel says, "The thing I care about is how fast I can run products and how fast I can deliver new ideas to the market and this is where Amdocs is helping to make a real impact. We work with retailers and they have a totally different understanding of what is fast, what is agile, what is first to market. Running a campaign faster doesn't mean next quarter - it means tomorrow. To support our customers we have to be able to think of an idea on Monday and be able to offer it on Friday and the Amdocs platform enables us to achieve that." A typical campaign, for example, would be giving customers extra free talk minutes for €15 they spend on groceries or extra talk minutes when they purchase specific products.

According to Mr. Andriullis, one of the remarkable features of the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite is its scalability. "We're going to be running up to 20 MVNOs in 30 countries spanning several continents - all on one Amdocs platform based in Brussels, with just 60 people, most of whom are in marketing. Amdocs has enabled us to integrate over 20,000 cash register tills - all different types - around Europe and deliver 50 million re-load codes that customers use to get free talk minutes. The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite works like a sales machine - it just sells and sells and sells."

In addition to the Carrefour 1 Mobile service, the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite has helped Effortel roll out other mobile brands as well across Europe. Effortel is planning to extend its use of the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite to include post-paid services.

Mr. Maarten Boute says, "Amdocs has helped Effortel to realize its vision to become one of the leading and independent MVNEs in Europe and the world. With Amdocs, Effortel has been able to develop a complete solution to help our MVNO partners get operational quickly and cost-effectively. The one, centralized Amdocs platform includes all the necessary elements for supporting new mobile service deployment."

With the Amdocs Compact Convergence suite, Effortel has a dedicated telecom system, IT systems including convergent real-time charging, customer-care, self care and service delivery capabilities for delivering products like voice mail, IVR (Integrated Voice Recognition), USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data) and SMSC (Short Message Service Center). The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite allows each of Effortel's MVNOs to decide which service they want to offer customers and choose only those elements which suit the value chain. Effortel is also able to scale the platform which currently supports around 1.4 million subscribers to accommodate up to 10 million.

Amdocs enables Effortel to bring new services to market in days or weeks

"The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite means Effortel can offer flexibility in tariff management, providing customers with the ability to launch promotional campaigns and new services in a matter of days, not months," says Mr. Boute.

The Amdocs Compact Convergence suite enabled Effortel to support Carrefour in bringing new service to market in a matter of weeks and enabled the service to be localized and customized to meet customer needs. For example, in Belgium, Effortel and Carrefour have developed packages aimed at families and roaming service packages for customers/ subscribers who frequently visit neighboring countries like The Netherlands and France.

The Amdocs platform also enabled Effortel to provide robust MVNE services to other MVNO's. "Effortel is both an MVNO and an MVNE, which is important to our MVNE customers," says Mr. Andriulis. "They know we use our own services too, and that we built the infrastructure for ourselves and our global partners. This is the best reliability guarantee."

"The MVNO market in Europe offers huge potential for growth," says Mr. Boute. "The Amdocs solution gives Effortel a unique opportunity to grasp the European MVNO market opportunity because it allows a business like ours - small in comparison to some of the multi-national mobile operators - to bring new and innovative mobile services to market much faster than competitors and for significantly less capital investment."

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