Broadview Networks Leverages Data Mediation to Consolidate Network Data, Reduce Errors and Boost Revenues
The Need
Broadview Networks, a provider of local, long distance, DSL and wholesale services delivered over 250,000 access lines to customers in the Northeastern United States, is one provider that has applied Kenan® Data Mediation to both solve immediate business challenges and to make better business decisions.
The Challenge
Traditionally, telecommunications service providers have used data mediation applications to perform the standard functions of network data collection and processing – capturing call or event detail records, processing and then passing the information to downstream systems.
Today, service providers are expanding the use of this technology to go beyond the basic functions to improve the way that other applications process data, to provide analysis of what kinds of calls customers are making and to define areas of the business where opportunities to increase profits and reduce operating costs exist.
The Solution
- Kenan Data Mediation is the essential layer between a service provider’s network and downstream systems that captures and processes the data required to realize revenue from customer transactions.
- Kenan offers a fully convergent, multi-vendor software mediation product that collects, mediates, and correlates vital customer usage information from both circuit-switched and packet-switched networks and distributes it to a variety of applications including prepaid and postpaid billing, rating, analytics and fraud management.
- Comverse’s data mediation product collects over 1 billion records per day and collects usage records accounting for nearly $1 trillion dollars of revenue per year.
- Kenan Data Mediation enables active communication with applications throughout the enterprise. As a result, service providers can use mediation to populate customer transaction records with real-time information from sources throughout the enterprise before they are passed downstream, allowing increasingly complex customer transactions to be processed more efficiently and accurately.
Results Speak for Themselves
Kenan Data Mediation processes several million local and long distance call detail records each day.
Over a four month period, Data Mediation recovered otherwise un-rateable Information Provider Service calls, saving Broadview Networks $20,000 with minimal effort. In six months, Kenan Data Mediation has recovered and corrected several thousand un-billable records, valued at over $37,000. Broadview Networks also uses Data Mediation to recognize and label 311 and 976 call records in a way that allows records to be accurately priced, without requiring custom programming in its rating engine.
In the near term, Broadview Networks will expand the use of Kenan Data Mediation to correlate records with interconnect partners for payment reconciliation. This will help Broadview Networks ensure that reciprocal compensation amounts are correct and the company is not being over or under billed.
Broadview Networks has also tapped into the reporting capabilities of Kenan Data Mediation. For example, when the company wanted to track how many calls of less than three seconds take place each month that go unbilled due to outdated business rules, Data Mediation quickly produced a report for analysis. As a result, Broadview Networks is now billing approximately $45,000/month more in usage.
Broadview Networks also offers Voice over IP (VoIP) services at a fixed rate to its customers on a trial basis. As the program expands and the market begins to accept usage-based charges for VoIP services, Broadview Networks will determine how best to apply Kenan Data Mediation to maximize revenues and reduces errors around their VoIP initiatives.