New Commercialisation Model aims to Boost Ireland's Competitive Position in the Communications Industry

Although it might seem like it to the user, interlinking between multiple mobile telephone operator networks is a non-trivial task. Charging for the call is even more difficult. Major barriers exist for new entrants to the billing industry that would ordinarily be expected to come up with a solution for this business need. For example; there is a significant amount of intellectual property embedded in software that the incumbents in the industry already have with their traditional products. In addition there are a number of major research challenges that need to be addressed. The result is that an internationally recognised billing solution service does not currently exist even though there is clear market demand for it.

The Billing4Rent project, which has recently been approved for funding from the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Partnerships scheme, will undertake the necessary research to enable such an international billing solution, based on an Application Service Provider (ASP) model such as that used by Salesforce.com.

Partners in the Billing4Rent project are the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology; Intec a world leader in global network infrastructure products and services and Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT). Together they have identified a unique and innovative way of overcoming these barriers to entry in the billing industry and they expect the results of this project to provide a full solution to what is recognised as an underserved target market and at the same time inject a major boost to Ireland’s competitive positioning in both the billing and the communications industries.

The TSSG has researched the area of on-line billing through other projects and in particular the Enterprise Ireland funded Rating Bureau Service (RBS) project and has developed a prototype rating engine and Rating Bureau Service that addresses some of the needs of an ASP model. Intec offers the market leading, open Dynamic Transaction Management (DTM) solution, and GMIT will provide as input its work on high performance computing and will focus its research on scalability and security of ASP billing services and the XBRL standard.

An important aspect of this project is its plans for exploitation of its results by a new company. The Billing4Rent company will draw together a team and the necessary funding to exploit the results of the project and launch the ASP billing solution internationally.

The Billing4Rent model will target the innovative builders of the new economy, the new smaller communications providers, competing in the deregulated market and the digital media companies building a market around content. At the moment a major problem for these new companies is the ability to bill for the delivery of their products and services. So Billing4Rent will not only create new value for Ireland but it will also support the development of existing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies.

This new and innovative ASP billing solution will benefit organisations such as Digital Hub companies by helping them realise their business models through a low cost, easy to use, charging and billing system for their content; Telecoms companies created out of the new deregulated environment; Mobile services providers/aggregators who will benefit by being able to bill for content services, track remittance from distributors and calculate payments to suppliers and many others in the emerging new economy Ireland.

Contact: Conor Ryan