Openet Announces Standards Compliant Policy and Charging Solution for VoLTE

- Solution deployed as adjunct to current PCC to handle all IMS traffic

DUBLIN, June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Openet, a global leader of telecom business systems, today announced that Openet's policy and charging control (PCC) solution for voice over LTE (VoLTE) services has been successfully deployed on multiple operator networks worldwide. The standards compliant PCC solution enables operators to configure policies and develop new charging and billing models for VoLTE service rollouts.

A 2013 Heavy Reading survey of 80 operators found more than 60 percent of respondents must upgrade or replace their current PCC systems to handle the additional demands placed by VoLTE services. Openet's VoLTE solution can be deployed side-by-side with existing policy, charging and billing systems to meet time-to-market needs with minimal impact on existing infrastructure.

"VoLTE introduces more complex policy and charging challenges relative to other data services," said Chris Hoover, GVP of marketing at Openet. "For fast call setup and crystal clear voice quality, every individual VoLTE call requires dynamically managed quality of service. This means the PCC system must provide oversight for millions of separate data sessions, ensuring that each session delivers the instant response and voice quality that customers are used to receiving from circuit switched services."

The challenges to PCC systems are not limited to data quality. New charging rules add additional complexity to existing pricing models because charging systems must rate VoLTE data traffic as voice calls with separate pricing for other data services.

Demand for VoLTE services means virtualization will play a key role to ensure ease of configuration and speed of VoLTE deployments. Openet has extensive experience with virtualized PCC deployments, working with a tier one North American operator who is using Openet's PCC solutions in a virtualized environment.

About Openet

Since the introduction of mobile data services in 1998, Openet has helped service providers capitalize on opportunities and overcome challenges. With competitive pressure accelerating, today's service providers rely on Openet software to evolve business models around networking smartphones, M2M devices and third party services. Openet's portfolio combines policy and charging control with device and third party interaction to enable innovative charging models, to control operating cost and to personalize services. More than 80 of the world's largest service providers in 30 countries use Openet's high performance software.

Openet has helped operators worldwide take advantage of growth opportunities by evolving legacy platforms to provide a flexible, real-time charging/OCS capability integrated with policy control (PCC). For more information, please visit www.openet.com.