BICS Empowers all Airtel Africa Mobile Operators With Roaming Value Added Services

BRUSSELS, February 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

BICS, a global provider of wholesale carrier services, has announced Airtel Africa will deploy a range of value-added BICS services across seventeen countries to improve revenues from roaming, over and above their current roaming services.

All seventeen of Airtel Africa's operating companies can now monitor inbound and outbound roaming traffic in real time with BICS' SMART Webvision, monetise international SMS traffic with its hosted SMS firewall, and increase their overall roaming footprint with its Roaming Hub and Roamfast service. Airtel Africa will also use BICS' Data Roaming Booster Solution, a service package that will enable Airtel Africa to prevent bill shock and enhance campaign management.

With SMART Webvision, BICS' integrated quality monitoring, tracking & tracing and business intelligence tool for 2G, 3G and 4G, Airtel Africa can monitor all its roaming traffic based on different tariffs and technologies. The tool offers real-time information and figures on usage and quality of the roaming experience over 2G/3G/4G, allowing Airtel Africa to tailor offers to different types of subscribers and develop new revenue streams.

The bill shock prevention feature of BICS' Data Roaming Booster Solution allows Airtel to avoid unexpected data roaming charges on subscriber's bills. SMS messages alert subscribers before they reach preset thresholds, improving transparency and reducing disputed bills. The solution is expected to improve customer satisfaction levels and generate new revenue streams.

André Beyers, Chief Marketing Officer of Airtel Africa comments: "With this roaming value-added service we are able to achieve higher levels of visibility of the performance of our networks, which in turn allows us to improve the quality of our roaming offering. The platform also enables us to identify and resolve performance issues in real time to provide higher service levels to our customers."

Clémentine Fournier, Regional Vice President Africa, BICS, said: "As the leading signalling and GRX provider in the world and in Africa, all our services are deployed via a hosted model. This is particularly suited to the unique needs of the African market. Our range of value-added services will allow Airtel Africa's operating companies to fix potential quality issues in real time, optimise roaming strategies, and monetise international SMS traffic, improving profitability quickly. The roll-out of our new Bill Shock and Campaign Management value-added service will help improve customer satisfaction and loyalty."  

About Airtel Africa

Airtel is driven by the vision of providing affordable and innovative mobile services to all. Airtel has African operations in: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 4 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 277 million customers across its operations at the end of September 2013.

About BICS

BICS delivers best-in-class international wholesale solutions to any communication service provider worldwide. Through its Mosaic portfolio, a comprehensive, flexible and innovative suite of solutions designed to be used individually, or collectively, BICS meets the existing and future requirements of the global telecoms industry.

BICS' headquarter is located in Brussels with regional offices in Bern, Dubai, Madrid, New York and Singapore. We also have a satellite office in Beijing and local representation in Accra, Cape Town, Miami, Montevideo, Nairobi and Toronto. Our team continuously strives to provide our customers with the highest levels of quality, reliability and interoperability enabling them to maximise their end-user value.

With our successful consolidation strategy, and a continuing focus on technological advancement and innovation, we have achieved a world-leading position in the international Voice and Mobile Data markets.

For more information, please visit: http://www.bics.com