Apollo-USA.com is the international telecommunications division of Apollo Communications, LLC, and is based in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.

Apollo-USA has two major business groups: 1) Direct Links and 2) Prepaid telecommunications services.

The Direct Links group finds local partners in countries throughout the world, working with these partners to develop and market telecommunications services between their countries and major markets in the United States, Europe and Asia. The Prepaid group provides prepaid phone cards, prepaid wireless services, postpaid international calling and Internet access.

An important part of Apollo’s services is software: software to monitor networks and software to service local partners. In both cases, this software must be web-oriented.

It was for this reason that Apollo chose the PortaOne billing platform, which offers outstanding design, smart implementation and an extremely attractive price.

Objective

Apollo-USA required a billing platform that serviced both the wholesale and retail telecommunication marketplaces. Apollo’s Direct Link group is “wholesale” (most of the sales here are between carriers), while its Prepaid group is “retail”, with most of the sales being made to businesses or individuals.

Apollo spent almost a year investigating billing solutions from every part of the world: the USA, China, Singapore, Israel, the UK and elsewhere. While several solutions had excellent features for one market or the other, none came close to covering both markets as well as PortaOne.

In addition, every business has its own small differences, and the vendor’s responsiveness to the customer is important to us. Edward Masaitis, Apollo’s vice-president for technology, put it clearly when he said:

“Apollo has never encountered a software vendor before PortaOne that had BOTH an extremely high level of technical competence, and a great willingness to hear our concerns. I have been gratified at how well the technical staff at PortaOne have responded to Apollo’s issues.”

Solution

PortaOne’s billing platform is fast, flexible and web-oriented. Apollo uses PortaBilling not only as a comprehensive internal billing manager, but also to allow local partners and customer service representatives to view and service individual accounts.

PortaBilling makes adding new wholesale customers, changing billing rates, re-costing past call detail records or launching new retail products very simple. Our local partners love the ability to view both summary account information and indivdual call records via the Internet, while our technical staff appreciate the graphic reports showing volume, performance characteristics and network statistics.

According to Apollo president Jeffrey Platt:

“In PortaOne, Apollo found unparalleled value. We have found one billing solution that can handle both our retail and wholesale divisions, thereby greatly simplifying our training and support tasks. And we have found a vendor who is very sensitive to our needs - and all at an extremely fair price. I would recommend PortaOne to anyone - except our competitors!”

Results

Though Apollo was a little concerned about bringing Unix servers into a Windows shop at first, our experience has been nothing but positive. The PortaOne servers have been rock-solid and easier to manage than we had expected.

Once again, the words of Apollo’s vice-president for technology say it all:

“PortaOne is more than a software vendor, it’s a strategic partner. Their team’s knowledge of Cisco products, in addition to billing issues, is nothing short of amazing. Now that I have worked with PortaOne, I can hardly imagine doing business without them!”