Marshall claims Cap will fit the phone bill

Telcos are wasting the chance to ride the wave of telecoms liberalisation by using antiquated systems for managing inter-operator traffic, writes Chiyo Robertson.

Deregulation has opened the European telecoms market to an influx of new operators. Last year the DTI issued more than 150 new licences.

But few can manage the billing and accounting of calls that pass through multiple networks - often called inter-connect charges - as they rely on processes from the pre-competitive market.

Manual techniques, with high staff costs and billing delays, block the expansion of inter-operator business, said Brian Marshall, director of telecoms at European services company Cap Gemini.

'A call from the UK to South America may pass through four networks. Controlling and accounting for traffic through each is a big headache,' he said.

But he claimed his company has a breakthrough that plugs the IT gap. The software, Omilo, scans, extracts and formats data from mediation devices which sit on switches in the phone network. Operators then get accurate bills for shared traffic. If operators can forecast charges accurately, users may get cheaper bills.

The system, launched last week, will be able to cope with up to 50 million calls a day. It runs on Digital or Hewlett-Packard Unix servers, IBM client workstations and Oracle database software. The product threatens Interconnect, Texas Instruments' rival software.