SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Limited (“SmarTone”) has chosen Oracle to transform its Business Support Systems (BSS). By upgrading its legacy solutions to bring prepaid charging and postpaid billing onto one unified, cloud native platform, Oracle Cloud Scale Charging and Billing will enable SmarTone to efficiently launch and scale differentiated offerings.

“We are constantly innovating to deliver superior service and experiences to our customers,” said Stephen Chau, SmarTone’s Chief Technology Officer. “Oracle Cloud Scale Charging and Billing’s unified, cloud native solution will enable us to improve agility by simplifying operations across consumer and enterprise (B2B) lines of business, accelerating time to market for new offers.”

SmarTone, a leading telecommunications service provider with operating subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Macau, offers voice, multimedia, and mobile broadband services, as well as fixed fiber broadband services for both consumer and corporate markets. The pioneer has been a leading 5G developer in Hong Kong with the launch of its territory-wide 5G services since May 2020. It was recently ranked by one report as the city’s “Strongest Communications Brand.”

Simplified BSS architecture

SmarTone selected Oracle Cloud Scale Charging and Billing to support its existing consumer and business offerings with advanced capabilities such as automated billing, real-time tracking, and customizable invoicing. The Oracle solution is aligned with TM Forum and 3GPP standards and uses an API-first approach to seamlessly integrate with most existing systems such as CRM, payment gateways, self-care, and self-service platforms.

Oracle Cloud Scale Charging and Billing will help SmarTone monetize the greater capacity, low latency, and precise geo-location tracking enabled by 5G and also support future business models such as industry-focused IoT offerings. Support for open APIs will allow such capabilities to be seamlessly integrated into co-created offerings in B2B2x business models.

“5G has enabled endless new service opportunities, but market leaders will be made by their ability to accelerate time to market from conceptualization to monetization,” Jason Rutherford, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications, Applications. “SmarTone has been a 5G trailblazer in Hong Kong, and we’re honored to support this next phase of their journey delivering innovative, next-generation offerings to the region.”

5G era and beyond

With the Oracle solution, SmarTone can efficiently scale to meet its growing customer demand using a private cloud deployment which distributes traffic across two charging sites in active-active mode. This allows business continuity to be maintained if one site were to go down, as the charging grid can be federated across both sites to maintain sessions and associated revenue or data. This has been recently demonstrated in a performance test for 100 million subscribers with multi-site deployment.

Covalensedigital, an Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) member and global systems integrator with deep expertise in delivering complex digital transformation projects in the communications sector, is managing the implementation of the solution.

“We are excited to once again collaborate with our close partner Oracle Communications to help SmarTone fast-track its monetization journey across new business models and its brand portfolio,” said Covalensedigital CEO Sreenivas Peesapati. “Oracle’s fully integrated charging and billing solution harnesses the benefits of a cloud native deployment and will modernize SmarTone’s BSS to accelerate time to market for launching evolving 4G and 5G services.”

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