Virgin Media Deploys Ascertain Inter Operator Provisioning Platform

30 November 2008

Virgin Media and Cartesian announce the successful implementation of Ascertain IOP (Inter Operator Provisioning) for ‘On-net’ and ‘Off-net’ products.

Virgin Media, a leading entertainment and communications company, was formed by the merger of the UK’s two largest cable companies, NTL and Telewest, and the subsequent acquisition of Virgin Mobile. When the company rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007, it inherited multiple provisioning technologies and processes for its telephony and broadband products. Deploying Ascertain IOP has enabled the company to increase automation of telephony provisioning processes and standardise its operations across the company.

Ascertain IOP provides Virgin Media with the administration and end-to-end fulfilment of Number Portability orders, Directory Enquiries and Emergency Services registrations, and subsequent switch and voicemail activation activity. IOP’s ‘Off-net’ capabilities extend this to include provisioning of ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and SMPF (Shared Metallic Path Facility) broadband services, and voice services through WLR (Wholesale Line Rental) and CPS (Carrier Pre-Select).

In addition to core provisioning functionality, Ascertain IOP offers Virgin Media comprehensive monitoring and auditing tools via enhanced, real-time reporting capabilities.

With Ascertain IOP, Virgin Media have streamlined provisioning, request management and reporting functions within a single system. Thanks to its automated order processing and rationalisation of the provisioning process, Ascertain IOP has already resulted in benefits throughout the company, from a reduced request-to-activation lifecycle duration, to fewer downstream provisioning errors and a consequent downturn in the number of inbound calls to their customer services department.

Furthermore, the application’s order management and synchronisation facilities allows Virgin Media the comfort of knowing that they meet Ofcom’s requirement for providers to register with Emergency Services before the customer is provisioned, and their obligations as a communications provider to meet the Geographic Number Portability End-To-End Process.

Commenting on the positive impact of the Ascertain IOP delivery to the business, Stephen Tidswell, Virgin Media’s Head of Application Support said, “The challenges of integrating a provisioning solution are considerable, yet in Ascertain IOP, Cartesian have allowed us to meet these with confidence. The orchestration of orders and transparent real-time reporting not only help us to deliver a more satisfying customer experience, but also to achieve significant operational benefits.”

Serving almost 10 million customers, Virgin Media is the UK’s largest residential broadband provider, the largest mobile virtual network operator and the second largest home phone and pay TV provider in the UK.

About Cartesian

Cartesian, a TMNG Global Company, is an independent technical consulting and software development company, delivering products and services to the telecoms industry. Cartesian’s expertise covers networks, engineering, and technology, through to revenue assurance and billing. Ascertain is Cartesian’s widely-deployed suite of software tools which address the revenue assurance, data integrity and provisioning needs of telecoms operators.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under News.