This was the fourth successful trade show in Singapore for PortaOne. We have been exhibiting at CommunicAsia since 2006 every year. We plan to continue this practice by participating in CommunicAsia 2010 as well.

The event is a major crossroad point for the telecom professionals not only from Asia-Pacific region but also from all over the world.

We were glad to welcome to our booth both new prospects looking for the best converged billing system and softswitching technology for service providers and our old customers who arrived to spend time with PortaOne team.

Please meet us at Internet Telephony West in Los Angeles, CA on September 2-3. Our booth is 427.

Spanish Company Lowers Costs of Telephone and Internet Services for Local British Clientele; Versatile PortaSwitch Billing/Call Management Supports Broad Mix of Services

As large and diverse as the worldwide digital services marketplace has become, opportunities abound for companies savvy enough to spot and develop profitable niches. Bubble, based in Torrevieja, Spain, has grown such a niche, thanks to unique insight—and the right technology.

“A sufficient number of Anglos live and work in Spain to build a business model around,” said Christophe Pauwels, Chief Technology Officer for Bubble World S.L. “We realized we could capture a significant number of these expatriates by lowering the cost of digital services—particularly the cost of communicating with friends, family and business partners back home in the U.K.”

With this vision in mind, Bubble has quickly become the preferred provider for thousands of English households, and businesses with strong U.K. connections, throughout Spain. To make its mix of telephony and ADSL-based wireless/fixed broadband services possible, however, Bubble had to keep its billing and call management services nimble, scalable and affordable. Its solution for such a flexible and cost-effective platform was PortaSwitch, from communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc.

“My previous experience with PortaSwitch at a previous company made the choice easy,” Pauwels said. “PortaSwitch had shown itself to be both reliable and scalable. Plus it has the advanced billing engine features we need to accommodate all the directions we expect our company to grow into.”

PortaSwitch is an IP multimedia subsystem capable of handling the complete call control and billing functions of a diversified digital services company. Its combination of softswitch and application servers forms the basis for a broad range of services at Class 5 QoS levels, from VoIP-based PBX and residential calling to broadband Internet access. When coupled with a Cisco Gateway, PortaSwitch provides access to the IP Centrex/IP PBX feature set on Internet telephone and/or circuit-switch technologies.

From the beginning, Bubble depended on PortaSwitch to provide convergent voice/broadband billing. The company uses PortaBilling100 (master, slave, and standby servers to ensure redundancy) to provision and bill customers, as well as multiple PortaSIP servers to control and route the calls and PortaUM for unified messaging and IVRs.

“With PortaSwitch we can combine voice, ADSL and wireless services in one monthly bill for our customers. Very few products on the market can accomplish this,” noted Pauwels. “Having PortaSwitch on our side enables us to improve our service quality and compete effectively in a crowded digital services marketplace.”

As Bubble’s business model evolves, it has the potential to develop new classes of customers as well as relationships with resellers, agents and various other service providers. PortaSwitch, through its support for origination and termination partner agreements, can deliver the partner management and settlement mechanisms that will ensure steady streams of revenue. What’s more, Pauwels says the platform has the capability to accommodate his company’s planned product roadmap.

“We foresee expanding into other services such as GSM-based mobile, TV on demand and more,” added Pauwels. “Five years from now we expect to be many times larger than we are now, in both the residential and enterprise segments. However we evolve, we know that PortaSwitch will be able to handle the growth.”

For more about Bubble, go to their website.

PortaOne has successfully exhibited at the annual ITW show (International Telecommunication Week) in Washington, DC.

International Telecoms Week is the meeting point for the international telecoms wholesale community where companies from all over the world meet in Washington, DC to buy and sell both voice and data products and services.

PortaOne has presented its newest product, PortaBilling Oracularius, a converged billing platform designed specifically for the ultimate reliability, performance and virtually unlimited scalability in Oracle Real Application Cluster environments.

ITW attracts the entire industry with participants from all areas of the wholesale industry Tier 1, 2 and 3 carriers, mobile / wireless operators, ISPs, VoIP providers and ITSPs, voice, data, satellite, sub sea and fixed-line markets.

ITW also provides the platform for extensive networking opportunities with many social networking opportunities including numerous parties and social events taking place during the three days.

UK-Based Morodo Uses Internet to Provide Ultra-Low Cost International Calling To Mobile Customers; Service Succeeds Thanks to PortaSwitch’s Reliability and Scalability.

For legions of mobile phone users around the world, MO-Call isn’t just a service—it’s a lifeline. MO-Call, from UK-based Morodo Ltd., is a virtual mobile network that lets people make international calls from their mobile phone at a fraction of the cost charged by their mobile telephony provider. The secret: a software add-in, downloaded from the MO-Call Web site to the user’s mobile handset. The add-in shifts outgoing calls directly to Morodo’s VoIP network for completion; savings can be as much as 90% below existing mobile network international tariffs.

As early as its pre-launch testing phase several years back, Morodo knew its service would be hugely popular. Morodo quickly realized its proprietary billing system and vendor call management software would not scale quickly enough to meet the heavy demand.

“We began seeking a robust, feature-rich billing and call control platform,” said James Barnes, Chief Technical Officer for Morodo Ltd. “After evaluating products from several vendors, we found that only PortaSwitch had the combination of reliability, scalability, features, call management capability, and product support we needed.”

PortaSwitch is a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution that lets IP telephony service providers deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, conferencing and more.

“PortaSwitch is flexible enough to support MO-Call’s multiple means of call set-up, call routing, billing—including multi-currency support—and multiple vendor management, plus other features such as Helpdesk ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response),” Barnes noted.

Morodo uses every product included in PortaSwitch: PortaBilling100, PortaSIP, and PortaUM (unified messaging platform), and PortaBridge, a conference server. Morodo’s pre-assessment of MO-Call’s popularity—and system stress—was evident as soon as PortaSwitch was installed in 2007. Thankfully, according to Barnes, PortaOne’s technical team has performed when needed.

“Our R&D has demanded much of PortaOne, frequently requesting support for new and innovative features in support of the MO-Call One Account communication service,” he stated. “Because we originate the majority of calls from cell phones using the MO-Call application suite, we have stretched the capabilities of PortaSwitch and the PortaSwitch development team. But they have always delivered for us.”

Since its rollout, PortaSwitch has improved Morodo’s business by making it faster and easier to manage call traffic, as well as to develop call features and calling products. The company has since introduced additional services including Web callbacks for PCs, mobiles and iPhones; instant messaging; free PC-to-PC calls, and low-cost international PC-to-phone calling. Barnes said PortaSwitch has not only alleviated the risk that is inherent in growing a broadly-focused, global telecom business, but also helped it compete head-to-head against Skype and the large mobile telephony providers.

“PortaSwitch’s billing just works. It’s the simplest thing—but the hardest to get right,” he said. “I have worked in the telecom industry for fifteen years for carriers on three continents, and have never used a billing platform with so few bugs or errors. It’s quite an achievement.”

For more about MO-Call, log on to www.mo-call.com; additional information about Morodo Ltd. can be found at www.morodogroup.com.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19 (Build 1) has been released today. The Build 1 incorporates multiple fixes and improvements and is based on feedback from the customers that has been received during the field tests of MR19 since early March 2009.

Based on the test results, the Maintenance Release 19-1 is now recommended for the general production deployment. MR19-1 contains various new features to enhance the services provided by carriers and telecommunication service providers.

Please contact your PortaOne support team to schedule the update.