Intec Turns to Billing Systems for Growth in 2007

British operations support systems (OSS) supplier Intec expects the sale of billing systems to become a prominent feature of its business with Latin American telcos in 2007, Intec's operations director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Per Martell told BNamericas.

Intec's Latin American revenues were split evenly last year between interconnection billing and mediation systems, but the regional unit aims to sign its first major service billing contract, for telcos to bill individual users and business customers, in the third quarter of 2007, Martell said.

Mediation systems gather information about subscriber usage patterns and distribute it to the telco's various business and operations units.

Billing contracts often take a long time to close due to the need to involve many departments within the telco, Martell said.

Retail billing is likely to be the fastest growing area in the unit's portfolio and should account for 20% of the company's revenues in 2007, he said.

A billing contract for a telco's retail operations, which would involve provision, management and integration of the system, will be worth anywhere from US$5mn upwards for Intec, according to Martell.

The company therefore expects its Latin America and Caribbean revenues to grow 10-15% in 2007 from the 9.5mn British pounds (US$18.5mn) billed in 2006, Martell said.

Intec also expects to see steady income from the company's convergent interconnection billing and mediation systems this year, he added.

"We have five billing opportunities, 5-6 mediation opportunities and 3-4 interconnection possibilities, as well as renewals and additions in our current pipeline," he said.

To help the growth, Intec intends to recruit eight or nine new employees to reach a workforce of about 70 in 2007, Martell said.

Intec grew 26% in revenues in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2006 from 7mn British pounds in 2005.

The company recently signed an agreement with Brazilian mobile operator Claro to supply a convergent mediation platform that will unify the entire operator's existing GSM, GPRS and TDMA platforms."

Posted to the site on 15th January 2007