BICS empowers all Airtel Africa mobile operators with roaming value added services

Brussels – Belgium, February 20, 2014 – BICS, a global provider of wholesale carrier services, has announced Airtel Africa will deploy a range of value-added BICS services across seventeen countries to improve revenues from roaming, over and above their current roaming services.

All seventeen of Airtel Africa’s operating companies can now monitor inbound and outbound roaming traffic in real time with BICS’ SMART Webvision, monetise international SMS traffic with its hosted SMS firewall, and increase their overall roaming footprint with its Roaming Hub and Roamfast service. Airtel Africa will also use BICS’ Data Roaming Booster Solution, a service package that will enable Airtel Africa to prevent bill shock and enhance campaign management.

With SMART Webvision, BICS’ integrated quality monitoring, tracking & tracing and business intelligence tool for 2G, 3G and 4G, Airtel Africa can monitor all its roaming traffic based on different tariffs and technologies. The tool offers real-time information and figures on usage and quality of the roaming experience over 2G/3G/4G, allowing Airtel Africa to tailor offers to different types of subscribers and develop new revenue streams.

The bill shock prevention feature of BICS’ Data Roaming Booster Solution allows Airtel to avoid unexpected data roaming charges on subscriber’s bills. SMS messages alert subscribers before they reach preset thresholds, improving transparency and reducing disputed bills. The solution is expected to improve customer satisfaction levels and generate new revenue streams.

André Beyers, Chief Marketing Officer of Airtel Africa comments: “With this roaming value-added service we are able to achieve higher levels of visibility of the performance of our networks, which in turn allows us to improve the quality of our roaming offering. The platform also enables us to identify and resolve performance issues in real time to provide higher service levels to our customers.”

Clémentine Fournier, Regional Vice President Africa, BICS, said: “As the leading signalling and GRX provider in the world and in Africa, all our services are deployed via a hosted model. This is particularly suited to the unique needs of the African market. Our range of value-added services will allow Airtel Africa’s operating companies to fix potential quality issues in real time, optimise roaming strategies, and monetise international SMS traffic, improving profitability quickly. The roll-out of our new Bill Shock and Campaign Management value-added service will help improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.”