Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel) is Cameroon’s national telecommunications service provider, offering voice, data, VSAT and internet services. Established in 1998, Camtel is wholly owned by the Government of Cameroon and serves its local high-tech, industrial and service sectors. Camtel’s modern CAMPAC packet transmission network, and its full range of advanced telephony services, operates as the hub for Cameroon’s lively national and international commercial transactions and business communications.
As Cameroon’s national telecommunications provider, Camtel provides a wide range of telephony services to its subscribers and business customers, including national and international telephony, Internet services, leased lines, satellite communications, and wireless CDMA.
The company was looking for a solution that would cater to its mediation, billing and rating, credit control, interconnect, order management, fault management, accounts receivable, and infrastructure management needs.
Camtel wanted a reliable, accurate, and flexible solution that would meet its current and future needs, while providing a seamless migration from their legacy systems to a new infrastructure environment. Moreover, the Cameroon provider’s goal was to leverage their broad portfolio of offerings and its introduction of new and advanced CDMA services.
Six companies participated in the selection process. FTS was awarded the project for its ability to provide a true end-to-end solution fully adapted to Camtel’s requirements.
During the negotiation process, FTS developed strong contacts with Camtel’s management and technical staff. In particular, they were impressed with FTS Billing & CRM’s credit-control module, and with the idea of being able to quickly launch new pricing plans.
The Camtel implementation includes FTS’ FTS Billing & CRM, interconnect, rating, and customer management platforms. Based on the company’s leading Business-Control layer technology – a software layer residing alongside the network/OSS and BSS systems – FTS Billing & CRM enables Camtel to develop new revenue opportunities via enhanced customer support and experience.
To implement the mediation part of the solution, FTS partnered with AceComm, a well-known US-based mediation software vendor. FTS acted as the prime contractor, with AceComm filling a subcontractor role.
The project consisted of two phases. Phase 1 covered rating and billing (including credit?control), mediation and interconnect, while phase 2 encompasses order management system (OMS), fault management, accounts receivable (AR) and CRM, followed by infrastructure management.
Following the introduction of FTS Billing & CRM, Camtel is now delivering new and exciting services to its customers while implementing creative billing schemes. The key benefit to the service provider’s customers will be a single, unified bill that outlines the different services they used from across the package that they subscribe to. The invoice details all the services they have been charged for, from wireline telephony and Internet services to wireless CDMA usage. The customer-management module also provides all Camtel’s customers with a single point of contact for all their queries.
“FTS Billing & CRM opens Camtel up to a new world of services and flexibility,” said David Nkoto Emane, Camtel’s Director General. “In addition to the new services we are able to provide, FTS Billing & CRM also improves our subscriber-facing activities. We can now offer our subscribers true unified bills and state-of-the-art customer management capabilities. On top of this, we saw an immediate ROI as the system allows us to improve our revenue collection. Furthermore, the FTS solution allows us to create and design service plans with a single UI, affording us the flexibility we need to move forward and become a telecommunications leader.”
Undoubtedly, the Camtel project is further proof of FTS’ continued commitment to the African market and of the uniqueness of FTS Billing & CRM’s solution.