One of the Philippines’ largest communication service providers is overhauling its provisioning processes with new OSS. Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) has completed its initial migration to next-generation OSS provided by unified solutions specialist Clarity.
The migration has been completed for exchanges located in the Bulacan province of the Philippines. The solution will manage the fulfilment and activation processes for PLDT’s fixed network services. It includes integration with other strategic PLDT systems to provide higher levels of process automation, which reduces the cost, time and error rates that can be associated with provisioning rapidly growing service volumes.
The preliminary stage of the migration, completed in November 2010, saw the transfer of 5.8 million master addresses from four PLDT systems to Clarity, to provide the foundation for the regional migrations.
Ana Maria A. Sotto, Vice President, Business Transformation Office, PLDT, said: “This system will become one of our most valuable tools in providing the highest level of service quality to our customers. It will enable us to further increase our operational efficiency in fulfilling existing products and services. It will definitely improve our capability to deliver new products and services to customers who are adapting to new technologies faster than ever before.”
Jon Newbery, Chief Executive Officer at Clarity, commented: “Updating a legacy OSS can be a significant challenge for many operators. They are typified by complex, critical systems that are embedded into key business processes. The PLDT project proves that even the largest incumbent operators can successfully migrate to a next-generation OSS with careful planning and execution. In doing so they significantly reduce their operational complexity and can react quickly in a rapidly changing market.”
In other news, PLDT shareholder NTT Docomo has concluded an option agreement with JG Summit Holdings to purchase another 2% of shares, with a value of roughly US$263 million. The Japanese firm’s acquisition is an attempt to keep its current stake in PLDT at around 20%, in response to the Filipino operator’s proposed purchase of a majority stake in Digital Telecommunications Philippines.
PLDT has benefited from Docomo’s investment since 2006, and the Japanese firm has stated its intention to “further strengthen its operational ties with PLDT and [PLDT’s] wholly-owned mobile subsidiary Smart Communications.”
