Orange: The Road to Multinational Operations

France Telecom (FT) is the third-largest operator in Europe and one of the largest in the world. Orange Group, a subsidiary of FT, has become a renowned telecom brand and now has 200 million subscribers throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Its multinational strategy has involved acquiring operators in undeveloped but promising regions. This allows Orange to control some resources and underlying revenue. After acquiring Telkom Kenya, Orange badly needed to solve the problem of an inflexible billing system. They selected the OCS supplied by ZTEsoft for this purpose. The new system had to be put into service within two months. ZTEsoft overcame difficulties that had plagued Orange during the early stage of project integration and completed the upgrade on time.

With flexible deployment, a unified billing platform, and a strong billing engine, the new OCS helped Orange Kenya quickly launch innovative service packages and rates. With the old system, it would have taken more than two months to launch a new package, but with ZSmart OCS this was lowered to between a week and a month. Orange’s subscriber base grew substantially as a result.

FT’s project in Cote d'Ivoire also demonstrated the distinct advantages of ZSmart OCS. Cote d'Ivoire is an important market for FT in Africa. FT’s common platforms, such as service-development platform and integrated alarm-monitoring platform, are deployed in Cote d'Ivoire but are shared by other African countries. Because FT’s data business is developing rapidly in Cote d'Ivoire, the original billing system that provided independent prepaid and postpaid billing as well as independent voice and data billing could no longer meet user needs. ZTEsoft used ZSmart OCS to help Orange Cote d'Ivoire deploy a combined voice and data billing solution.

ZTEsoft deployed this billing system in two steps. First, combined voice and data billing was implemented for prepaid subscribers. Ensuring the system could support all kinds of billing policies was a significant challenge. ZTEsoft took a record fast eight weeks to integrate the entire data billing system into the existing OCS for combined voice and data billing. Second, combined prepaid and postpaid billing needed to be realized. The whole project was completed successfully in February 2012. The combined billing system has also helped FT Cote d'Ivoire significantly reduce its capex and opex.

The strong performance of ZSmart OCS has paved the way for its wider acceptance by FT. In later years, ZSmart OCS was deployed successfully in Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Bissau, Cameroon, Congo, Slovakia, and Poland.

Dealing with the Data Explosion

Data traffic has increased rapidly in recent years, and operators risk becoming pipe providers. To help FT Cote d'Ivoire control data traffic, ZTEsoft has deployed a ZSmart policy manager (PCRF) that can control policy and charging for data traffic in the IT domain. This allows FT Cote d'Ivoire to adapt to ever-changing data needs by flexibly implementing policies.

ZTEsoft has also helped FT Senegal implement part of the PCRF by upgrading the existing OCS. This has allowed FT Senegal to control their data traffic in a much more cost-efficient manner.

Operators are compelled to avoid being pipe providers and to work towards IT transformation. At the end of 2011, FT acquired Congolese operator CCT, which had 4.5 million subscribers. To improve its brand image in Congo, Orange had a pressing need to reconstruct the original CCT network infrastructure. The IT system needed to be optimized to support data.

Before the acquisition, CCT’s BSS/OSS contained a prepaid ZSmart OCS and an internetwork settlement system; however, there was no IT system. Through IT transformation, FT Congo could provide IT support for all services. ZTEsoft built on the existing ZSmart OSS to expand systems associated with business handling, inventory management, product sales management, payment collection, agent management, postpaid billing, account and revenue management, international roaming, and fault management. ZTEsoft also strengthened the existing prepaid billing functions. All this helped FT Congo meet the growing data traffic demands brought about by 3G networks.

To speed up the time to market for new Orange-branded services, FT required ZTEsoft to complete the upgrade project within 80 days. ZTEsoft finished the project ahead of schedule and put it into operation within 50 days. The project passed the acceptance test, and FT Congo was satisfied with ZTEsoft’s ability to deploy an integrated IT project.

Software as a Service

After completing the IT transformation in 2011, FT Congo has now turned its attention to maintaining such a huge network and IT system efficiently and reducing its opex. ZTE has provided FT Congo with managed services that include ZTEsoft’s IT service product ZSmart AnyCare.

A local service team has been established to operate and maintain the network and IT system. As a result, FT Congo has been freed from complex maintenance work and can now focus on marketing to reduce opex.

With further cooperation, FT and ZTEsoft have learned more about each other. For seven years, ZTEsoft has been walking with FT Orange on the road to multinational operations. ZTEsoft’s products have been deployed from Africa to Europe in small-capacity scenarios and big-platform scenarios involving millions of subscribers. ZTEsoft’s products range from a single OCS to integrated IT transformation solutions. By helping FT expand their business ZTEsoft has also transformed itself.