VimpelCom enlisted the help of Logan Orviss, a specialized consultancy, to help advise on the leading vendors who had proven, reliable and most importantly, scalable systems that could meet this challenge.

VimpelCom ran a formal Request for Proposal process that pitted all of the major vendors in head to head competition to build Russia’s most advanced, and configurable, Operational and Business Support System in use by any mobile operator in the world.

Amdocs was chosen for the post-paid billing and Comverse for the pre-paid as neither vendor could offer a converged solution that was proven to scale to the levels that VimpelCom had in mind.

The mediation system would collect all of the usage events for both systems.  VimpelCom was using a lot of different switching solutions from a variety of equipment vendors and none of the short-listed mediation vendors had deep experience with them all. It would be important that the chosen system was flexible enough to easily add new vendors’ formats and protocols. It would also be critical that all the business rules could be easily configured and centrally controlled.

VimpelCom chose the TeleSciences Core Server (5000i) application to be installed in Moscow on a SUN Enterprise server running Solaris as the Operating System.

The RFP process was complex and lengthy, and when the final decision was made there were only 90 days to turn up the first phase of the project. All the vendors worked around the clock, the first tests were successful, and the mediation system was cut over ahead of schedule.

Within days it was determined that the new mediation system was providing over 4% more revenue than the in-house built system that it replaced. Fewer records were being rejected, more accurate data was getting to the billing systems.

The system was also proving to be very flexible. Business rules could be changed on the fly. Rather than write code for the front end of the billing system, it was decided that the data manipulation could be performed in the mediation layer. With no need to recompile source code, regression testing was not required and the length of time to introduce new services was drastically reduced.

The Core Server also helps to assure revenue by processing the TAP3 and CAMEL records that are used for inter-carrier settlements. TeleSciences Core Server converts raw network usage events to generate ASN.1 format records, as well as decoding incoming roaming records for conversion to the format that is used by the post-paid billing system.

That was just the beginning. In 2001 VimpelCom had approximately 1.5m subscribers, all in Moscow. Today there are almost 40 million subscribers across seven regions that stretch the length and breadth of the continent. VimpelCom has made several successful acquisitions and added a wide variety of different network elements. All new elements have been easily, and quickly, added to the system.

The SUN Enterprise server has grown over the last 5 years by turning on more CPUs. As the TeleSciences Core Server (5000i) application is multi-threaded, it is able to take advantage of the additional processors to distribute the effort of filtering, correlating and formatting across multiple CPUs. The application can also be distributed across multiple servers, so that VimpelCom can install a server in a local region that is linked to the central server in Moscow. This provides increased security and disaster recovery while maintaining the ease of configuration and monitoring.

All the professional services that were required by VimpelCom to initially turn up the systems, configure elements and implement business rules were provided by the TeleSciences Customer Services organization.

"This project was a key milestone in our strategic programme to move from the VimpelCom Atlant legacy system to the New Amdocs Billing System. The team has not only succeeded in implementing a (sic) industrial standard mediation device on time, within budget and quality, but just as important, they have proven that VimpelCom can and will put an industry standard billing system into production."

Unified Mediation Device Project Manager, VimpelCom AO

"Without a doubt, UMD was the best run project in VimpelCom last year in terms of timing and budget; likewise, it has had a significant impact on our operations regarding revenue increase, risk aversion for new billing, and pyschological motivation. The vendor, the project manager, and, most importantly, the project team have made a very difficult task come into fruition and have set the bar high for all subsequent projects upon which we embark. Thank you. My sincere congratulations to you and your teams."

Vice President, VimpelCom