NOS Case Study. Operational Challenges SIGMA ENABLES NOS MULTIMEDIA TO DELIVER TRUE ALL-PLAY OFFERINGS ABOUT NOS

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1 CASE STUDY

2 NOS Case Study ABOUT NOS NOS Multimedia, based in Oeiras, Portugal, is a true allplay provider. With more than 1.6 million subscribers, NOS offers analog and digital cable TV; IPTV over ADSL lines resold from Portugal Telecom; satellite TV and broadband via resale; video on demand; ISP services; PacketCable-based VoIP over cable; SIP-based VoIP over ADSL; fixed-mobile convergence-like home zone voice services; WiFi hotspots; and pre- and post-paid mobile services. With such a broad array of in-house and resale offerings, NOS s fundamental challenges are to ensure its service fulfillment is completely synchronized and to maintain consistent, centralized views of its customers, regardless of the services to which they subscribe. SIGMA ENABLES NOS MULTIMEDIA TO DELIVER TRUE ALL-PLAY OFFERINGS Operational Challenges As NOS grows, several new challenges are coming into focus. First, the company needs to be able to launch new services, promotional offers, and new bundles rapidly. This need is particularly acute as NOS builds out its mobile services offerings, which it provides as an MVNO on a resale basis. Because its bundles are delivered through several different technology and carrier domains, it needs to have visibility across them all, coupled with on-net and off-net management capabilities from service fulfillment and customer management points of view. This is no simple task. Most service providers struggle to synchronize and have visibility across multiple on-net products. NOS, however, is reflective of the communications industry s near-future state, where multiple infrastructure- and application-based services are delivered under a common brand, but sourced from multiple providers. To gain the visibility and fluid service fulfillment it needs, NOS pursued a high level of automation as one of its critical operational goals. But it ran into an increasingly common snag along the way: its initial provisioning supplier simply could not deliver. The provisioning vendor s solution proved unable to support NOS s breadth of services; the complexity of its multi-party fulfillment processes; and the volume it experiences as it interacts with more than 1.6 million customers. While the provisioning vendor won the contract by offering the lowest bid for its solution, the costs NOS actually faced as a result of its struggles were greater than anticipated.

3 Sigma Solution With its initial provisioning vendor struggling to deliver, NOS turned to Sigma Systems to move its service fulfillment automation projects forward. Sigma s first step was to conduct a complex OSS system and subscriber migration. This moved NOS s service fulfillment and customer management processes and data to a common OSS platform, built on Sigma Provisioning. Now the service is configurable, agile and scalable beyond NOS s planned subscriber growth goals. This migration was completed in six months. With this common SMP-based OSS solution in place, Sigma provided NOS with the automated functionality it needed to deliver services over on-net cable, off-net satellite, and off-net DSL facilities. Consequently, NOS is able to offer its customers seamless service bundles to any location over the best available infrastructure according to each customer s preferred access infrastructure. For NOS, Sigma s solution manages and automates service provisioning and activation; resource management; technical order management; and subscriber portfolio management for its highspeed data (HSD) services over DSL and two-way satellite. Sigma also automates decomposition and fulfillment of NOS s technical orders, coordinating between on-net and off-net domains. Sigma has delivered complete automation for NOS s VoIP service offerings and recently implemented the first of two phases that will automate fulfillment for mobile offerings. From the Global Leader in Advanced IP Service Fulfillment Solutions. SIGMA SYSTEMS Mobile Services In the first MVNO phase, NOS is delivering basic prepaid mobile services to not known customers. In other words, customers can purchase pre-paid SIM cards for which NOS provides the service yet do not necessarily need to be provisioned formally as subscribers. Sigma handles number management and number portability in support of this offering. In support of the second MVNO phase, Sigma is supporting NOS s known pre-paid mobile, post-paid mobile, and WiFi offerings. In support of these offerings, Sigma handles number management, number portability, service activation, and service portfolio management for postpaid services. One of the key components of this solution is an OSS/J-based BSS adapter that enables service fulfillment automation as a result of order management integration with the mobile wholesaler. NOS launched its pre-paid mobile service and pre-paid and post-paid WiFi offerings using Sigma s solution. NOS s postpaid mobile service launched in mid-2009 on Sigma Provisioning. On-Net Device Activation In support of NOS s on-net services, Sigma delivers complete service fulfillment automation down to device activation for a wide range of devices. These include: Nagravision Aladdin for digital video conditional access. Exsad for analog video conditional access. SeaChange for near-vod and pay-per-view. Ericsson-Tandberg for true VOD. Siemens HiQ Surpass call management servers. Cisco BTS10200 call management servers. Incognito for DHCP device provisioning Microsoft Exchange for . Apache for personal webspace. Panda Security for virus protection and firewall applications and IP Unity and Dialogic voice mail platforms.

4 OSS, BSS and B2B Integration Integration with NOS s sophisticated, in-house architecture and its B2B interfaces with wholesale suppliers is central to Sigma s ability to automate NOS s complex service fulfillment processes. Sigma has delivered a B2B interface to Portugal Telecom to support ADSL resale and in turn automate fulfillment for HSD and IPTV services. At the same time, Sigma integrates through a TIBCO enterprise service bus (ESB) with NOSs in-house BSS infrastructure, including a Siebel CRM implementation, NOS s MyZon self-care portal, and its SAP implementation for supply chain management. Sigma also integrates directly with NOS s Amdocs mediation platform to validate product data, with its Geneva billing implementation, and with its Ericsson AGSM payments gateway, which handles pre-paid mobile transactions. Sigma thereby automates subscriber activation for pre-paid mobile that is synchronized with the mobile services wholesaler through the OSS/J-based adapter mentioned earlier. RESULTS AND BENEFITS As a result of Sigma s solutions, NOS has realized multiple benefits. Its technical order decomposition, orchestration, and fulfillment are automated across multiple services, networks, suppliers, technologies, and device types. All of this is accomplished from one common OSS platform that in turn provides a centralized view of subscriber profiles, service fulfillment processes, and service order status. Further, this common platform enables NOS to manage customers and service offerings across multiple domains, which is helping the company to meet its goals relating to launching new services, bundles and promotions. In particular, Sigma has enabled NOS to roll out mobile offerings, which make it a true all-play provider. Perhaps most importantly, Sigma has enabled NOS to overcome completely any setbacks that resulted from the struggles it experienced with its initial provisioning vendor. The positive impact of Sigma Systems solutions on NOS Multimedia service delivery is reflected in the numbers: Broadband growth was 19.7 percent on a year-over-year basis Voice subscribers grew 327K only 18 months after launch About 53 percent of customers subscribe to two or more services, compared to 38 percent in 2007 Blended ARPU rose by 5.5 percent Churn rates for triple-play subscribers was nearly 53 percent lower than single-play subscribers The NOS deployment shows that the business results from the Sigma Systems next-generation OSS solutions and impacts can be verified and validated.

5 Sigma Systems is the pioneer in catalog-driven Idea-to-Install products for communications, media and high tech companies. Our BSS/OSS product portfolio spans product & service catalog, configure price quote, order management, service provisioning, service inventory, cloud brokerage, device management, and active mediation, letting you easily create, sell and deliver new