Frost & Sullivan Recognises Openet for its Technological Excellence in the Global Billing Mediation Sector

London, UK, 07th May, 2007 - Openet, a provider of Transactional Intelligence solutions for the world’s largest and most innovative service providers, today announced that its FusionWorks Platform has been awarded Stratecast’s (a Division of Frost & Sullivan)  2007 Global Billing Mediation Technical Excellence Award.

“Openet offers mediation, rating and charging capabilities to over 50 customers worldwide,” remarks Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Mr. Karl Whitelock. “The company has a strong presence in the largest North American and European carriers, particularly with wireless carriers and its success in wireless should translate well in the wireline as well as converged space.”

The company is an industry leader in the mediation sector by virtue of the technical excellence embodied in the FusionWorks product and solution family. This includes the core FusionWorks product upon which Openet’s Convergent Mediation, Convergent Charging, IMS Charging and Network-Edge Rating solutions are built.

Openet Convergent Mediation has been designed with convergence in mind. It offers network convergence, customer convergence and service convergence. Convergent Charging provides a bi-directional real-time interface between the network and downstream support systems, primarily to address pre-delivery authorisation, control and charging of services.

Openet’s IMS capabilities are built around FusionWorks’ IMS functionality. IMS Charging is an example of the company’s technological leadership and foresight. This solution required no new components other than interfaces to support the current billing needs of IMS and is a blend of existing software modules to support the IMS architecture.

“However, the most important aspect of Openet’s offerings revolves around its technology leadership in the real-time network-edge mediation space,” explains Mr. Whitelock. “Openet Network-Edge Rating allows operators flexible, high performance rating capabilities and supports real-time, as well as batched or streamed rating requests.”

In terms of scalability, the Convergent Mediation’s design focuses on the performance and scalability needs of Tier 1 providers. Openet’s largest production deployment to date handles 3 billion events per day.

“The company offers support for a wide range of services,” adds Mr. Whitelock. “It is believed that that service providers can use Openet Convergent Charging to deliver any service to any type of subscriber and enable any kind of payment method for collection or authorisation before delivery.”

Openet’s customer list includes several large service providers in North America and Europe, particularly in wireless. The company claims to handle two-thirds of all wireless data traffic in North America and prides itself on being the sole mediation provider for a number of Tier 1 wireless providers.

The Frost & Sullivan Stratecast Global Billing Mediation Technical Excellence Award is bestowed upon the company that has pioneered the development and introduction of technically excellent mediation products into the market – products that have either impacted or have the potential to impact several telecommunications sectors. This Award recognizes a company’s technical excellence that is expected to bring significant contributions to the mediation sector in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture. It also recognizes the overall technical excellence of a company and its commitment towards technology innovation in the mediation sector.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics.
For more information, visit www.frost.com

About Openet

Openet is a leading worldwide provider of event processing and transaction management solutions.  The Transactional Intelligence of the company’s solutions extracts increased value from diverse service provider networks, enabling rapid introduction of new services and reliable, cost-effective management of existing services.  Openet is focused on delivering best-in-class network edge solutions and specialized engagement processes that create business value from network activity. A global company, Openet’s implementations include long-running engagements with the world’s leading service providers such as British Telecom, Orange, Cingular and Verizon Wireless.  For more information, visit www.openet.com.

Openet Media Contacts:
Andrea Kavanagh Megan Lane 
Openet SHIFT Communications
+353 1 629 6456 (617) 779-1854
Andrea.Kavanagh@openet.com    mlane@shiftcomm.com