N-soft selects Aculab technology for switching and billing platform in Africa

Added: (Fri Aug 24 2001)

Pressbox (Press Release) - MILTON KEYNES, ENGLAND, 24th August, 2001 -- A multi-platform prepaid telecommunication services solution in Gabon, Africa, is being implemented with the help of digital signal processing (DSP) resources from Aculab, a leading provider of enabling technology for the communications market.

Paris based N-Soft has selected Aculab’s Prosody PCI card to create a switching and billing platform for OPT Gabon, the Gabon national telecommunications operator.

The $3.5 million multi-platform, nationwide installation will be based on N-Soft’s N-Switch platform and will provide prepaid fixed-line residential and business telephone services to the African country.

Prepaid telephone service is an increasingly important service offering for telecom operators in emerging regions worldwide. It guarantees revenue by requiring advanced payment and provides substantial cost savings by reducing the operators’ billing and administration overhead.

“We chose Aculab’s Prosody PCI card because of its massive flexibility, power, cost-effectiveness and modular design, which minimizes spares stock holding,” says Eric Messika, CEO and President of N-Soft, a “Connected with Aculab” partner.

“The fact that Prosody is easy to use is vital, as it will be maintained by a low skilled workforce across 27 towns. We’re also delighted with the technical and protocol support that Aculab provides us.”

Mr. Messika points out that protocol support is critical when dealing with both CAS and SS7.

“When you’re installing systems in countries such as Africa, the CAS protocols required often differ from the specs provided by the PTTs, which can cause problems,” he explains.

“With Aculab’s protocol support, we can be confident that we’ll be able to get our systems up and running almost anywhere extremely quickly.”

To provide the necessary DSP resources, Aculab’s Prosody PCI card will be combined with primary rate modules and E1 PCI trunk cards.

“By using a range of product combinations from Aculab’s “modular” portfolio, N-Soft will be able to maintain consistency across all the systems, from the smallest to the largest,” says Chris Gravett, sales and marketing director of Aculab. “As a result, it will be able to minimise training and inventory costs.”

N-Soft is a partner in Aculab’s “Connected with Aculab” program, which represents leading voice communication companies successfully working in unison, strategically enabling global communications via open, powerful and market leading products and services. The collaboration is known as one of the most innovative and effective in the industry.

About Aculab
Through a customer-focused approach to development, Aculab has produced a computer telephony (CT) product portfolio that satisfies the speech resource and global digital connectivity requirements of developers and system integrators. CT applications utilising Aculab’s components can handle real-time telephony, through an extensive range of resources and signalling systems.

The evolution of Aculab’s generic API, to provide a consistent programming interface, reduces the integration time of a combination of technologies including Text-To-Speech (TTS), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), conferencing and fax. Collectively through supporting a broad range of industry standards and operating systems, Aculab can provide the products needed when quality and performance cannot be compromised.

Aculab’s head office is located in Milton Keynes, UK with offices in North America, Germany and Australia. Website: www.aculab.com

About N-Soft
N-Soft, founded in 1986, provides calling card, prepaid (and post-paid) residential/business, IVR, and call center technologies globally. N-Soft is headquarted in Paris, France; US offices are in suburban Washington DC. Its prepaid calling card platform, N-Switch, is sold worldwide. Features include customizable IVR and advertising messages; value-based least cost routing; multiple products, languages, currencies and protocols. Options include prepaid mobile, prepaid Internet, VoIP, and ATM. N-Soft also develops the award-winning Etrog CTI call center package and Rekoll, an IVR application generator. For more information visit N-Soft at http://www.n-soft.com.

For further information, please contact:

Faye Matthews
Aculab plc.
Telephone: +44 (0) 1908 273 800
Email: faye.matthews@aculab.co.uk

Tracey Williams
TWPR
Telephone: +44 (0) 1225 723237
Email: twpr@compuserve.com

Contact:
Tom Pedersen
Director of Marketing
N-Soft
+33 (0) 155 041 041
tpedersen@n-soft.com