Ericsson Signs Deal With Vodafone India to Deploy Payment Solutions

Network solutions major Ericsson on Tuesday said it has won a contract from Vodafone India to deploy its payment solutions in seven circles for the country's second largest telecom operator. Financial details of the deal were not revealed.

The five-year contract covers new circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, besides Mumbai and Maharashtra.

"Ericsson Charging platform to be launched across 7 Vodafone circles, enabling new revenue-generating features and potential payment convergence across prepaid and postpaid segments," it said in a statement.

The system enables a host of new services like flexible refill, community charging and real time balance notifications among several other different voice and data offerings for over 75 million prepaid customers, it added.

It will also enable Vodafone to provide personalised offers to individual consumers by understanding their service consumption patterns, Ericsson said.

"As a part of the five-year agreement, Ericsson will be replacing legacy infrastructure with its new Charging System across five new circles of Uttar Pradesh (W), Uttar Pradesh (E), Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, in addition to Mumbai & Maharashtra circles where it was already deployed," it said.

The deployment will enable convergence across payment methodologies and devices and enable Vodafone to activate enhanced data charging via mobile broadband charging in the future, Ericsson added.

Ericsson has been a long-term partner for Vodafone. In 2010, Ericsson was chosen by Vodafone as an exclusive 3G HSPA hardware, software and related service vendor to equip India's largest metropolitan cities - Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with latest HSPA mobile broadband network.

Worldwide, Ericsson delivers more than 1,500 consulting and systems integration projects every year in multi-vendor and multi-technology environments and provides real-time charging solutions with more than 280 charging and billing customers globally.