Tekelec and Tecnotree Integrate Independent Policy and Charging Systems

MORRISVILLE, N.C. and ESPOO, FINLAND — February 16, 2012 — Mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec and telecoms IT solutions provider Tecnotree Corporation today announced successful interoperability testing between Tekelec’s Policy Server (PCRF) and Tecnotree’s Real-Time Convergent Charging system. This is the first announced integration between independent policy and charging vendors over the proposed Sy interface. This gives mobile service providers the scalability and Diameter signaling efficiency required to grow their mobile data networks and deliver personalized data plans.

The 3GPP and member organizations – including Tekelec and Tecnotree – are developing the Sy interface to improve Diameter-based communications between the PCRF and online charging systems (OCS). The new standard interface is being introduced this year.

“As our customers expand their policy and charging systems to support new services such as shared data plans and over-the-top services, they are requesting a standards-based approach to ensure scalability and signaling efficiency,” said Doug Suriano, Tekelec’s chief technology officer. “Our close work with the 3GPP and Tecnotree gives service providers a head start on integrating best-of-breed policy and charging products.”

The new Sy standard provides several advantages to service providers compared with proprietary, pre-integrated approaches:

• Improved scalability. Policy and charging systems can scale independently using Diameter signaling routing. This allows service providers to manage the signaling load needed to support service plans based on real-time factors such as time of day, application usage, speed, and network congestion.

• Signaling efficiency. The new Sy interface reduces the back-and-forth messages between policy and charging systems required to count service quotas and balance customer accounts.

• Flexible usage tracking through better sharing of information between the policy and charging systems and expanded usage thresholds based on volume, application, speed, or time.

• Reduced costs by eliminating complex, proprietary, and costly pre-integration between the policy server and the online charging system (OCS).

“The majority of tier one service providers seek interoperability and integration of policy with independent charging systems,” said Graham Finnie, chief analyst at Heavy Reading and author of the report Policy, Charging & Billing: What Tier 1 Operators Want. “They also desire standardized 3GPP interfaces wherever possible. So interoperability across the new Sy interface is an important milestone for vendors to reach.”

“Policy and charging best serve operators when each vendor has a dedicated product – not when one product is sold to subsidize the other,” said Timo Ahomäki, vice president, product management of Tecnotree. “Interoperability with Tekelec over Sy reduces network complexity and opens the doors to more revenue-generating policy and charging use cases.”

About Tekelec

Tekelec’s intelligent mobile broadband solutions enable service providers to manage and monetize mobile data and evolve to LTE and IMS. We are the architects of the new Diameter network, the foundation for session, policy and subscriber data management. More than 300 service providers use our market-leading solutions to deliver cloud, machine-to-machine and personalized services to consumers and enterprises. For more information visit www.tekelec.com.

About Tecnotree

Tecnotree is a global provider of a broad range of telecom IT solutions focused on charging, billing, customer care, messaging and content services. Tecnotree empowers communication service providers to create and monetize a broad marketplace of digital services, and augment value across the customer lifecycle. Acknowledged for agility and commitment, Tecnotree has more than 900 employees serving over 100 operators globally. Tecnotree is listed on the main list of NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. with the trading code TEM1V. For more information on Tecnotree visit www.tecnotree.com