Nokia has recently announced the initiation of the deployment of its Converged Charging (NCC) software for Vodafone in multiple European countries. This deployment utilizes a cloud-based agile delivery model, enabling efficient rating and charging for 5G services while enhancing the delivery of products and services to customers.
NCC functions as a containerized network feature in a 5G standalone environment, granting Vodafone access to new revenue streams from 5G services, such as network slicing and flexible product offerings. The deployment encompasses various Vodafone markets across Europe, including the UK and Italy, and facilitates standardized next-generation charging across Vodafone networks with real-time rating and charging capabilities. This marks a complete transition from legacy charging systems to 5G-ready methods.
NCC empowers communication service providers to swiftly and effectively create and launch new services to the market, utilizing intuitive drag-and-drop functionality. Its highly configurable nature empowers Vodafone to tailor the solution to cater to consumers, enterprises, and new business models.
Alberto Ripepi, chief network officer of Vodafone, said: “5G enables many new services and, with this new system, new ways to charge for them. By leveraging the scale of our pan-European and African networks, we can help customers manage factory equipment, open developer marketplaces using our APIs and enable enterprises to offer bespoke products to their own customers.”
Hamdy Farid, senior vice president of business applications at Nokia, added: “We are pleased to be furthering our relationship with Vodafone through the roll-out of Nokia’s Converged Charging solution. As advanced 5G services start to become more widespread, our Converged Charging solution is very well-placed to help communication service providers and enterprises drive innovative 5G use cases and business models and deliver significant operating efficiency improvements.”
