AIS Partners with Netcracker Technology for Billing System Overhaul
Netcracker Technology revealed its collaboration with Advanced Info Service (AIS), Thailand’s premier mobile operator, to streamline its billing systems. AIS Billing System Overhaul
AIS plans to transition customer billing operations to Netcracker Revenue Management, a core component of Netcracker Digital BSS. This transformation is projected to yield swifter time-to-market outcomes, unify sales and revenue data, enable bundled product offerings, and elevate the overall customer experience.
At the crux of this transformation initiative lies the utilization of the Netcracker Cloud Platform. This comprehensive platform, renowned for its end-to-end capabilities driving business performance and agility, will serve as the backbone for AIS’s extensive IT infrastructure overhaul.
The deployment strategy will encompass leveraging customer billing management and converged rating & charging from Netcracker Revenue Management. Additionally, the implementation will adopt Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) methodologies to ensure seamless, ongoing system updates.
The decision by AIS to sustain its collaboration with Netcracker stems from various compelling reasons. These include Netcracker’s provision of a cloud-native IT stack, compliance with major industry benchmarks such as TM Forum APIs, the flexibility to deploy via the customer’s cloud in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, streamlined operations, easier system upgrades, and an overall reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Suppachai Panichayunon, Head of the Solutions Business Unit at AIS, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration: “Having a converged billing platform aligned with industry standards and supporting diverse deployment models and product rollouts will give us a significant edge in our market. Extending our partnership with Netcracker, given our past successes, promises additional positive outcomes.” AIS Billing System Overhaul
AIS is aiming for an annual capital expenditure of Bt27–30 billion in 2023, according to news reports. For the first nine months of 2023, AIS said its Capex reached Bt19 billion. The number of 5G subscribers reached 8.5 million at the end of Q3 2023, AIS said earlier.
The main focus of AIS Capex was
# Sustain 5G leadership and network quality management
# Expand AIS fiber coverage to capture untapped demand
# Enhance enterprise business and digital services with high growth potential
# Network optimization through reducing low-value traffic and shifting traffic towards 5G while ensuring sufficient network deployment
Yaniv Zilberman, Vice President at Netcracker, highlighted the fruitful history between the two entities: “Our longstanding relationship with AIS has paved the way for numerous opportunities, including this latest engagement. We are thrilled to take this next step alongside AIS to craft a next-generation IT landscape that caters to both current and future business demands.”
