Software: Sprint taps Zact, ItsOn for personalized prepaid platform

Software is becoming an increasingly important part of telecommunication networks and deployments as both wired and wireless carriers look to add functionality to operations while increasing simplicity and reducing costs. RCR Wireless News is keeping an eye on recent developments through its weekly “Software” wrap up.
—Sprint announced it would tap Zact Mobile and ItsOn to offer “personalized services” for prepaid customers designed to differentiate those offerings in the market. ItsOn owns Zact Mobile, which is a mobile virtual network operating offering services across Sprint’s network.
The deal will see Sprint use ItsOn’s cloud-based virtual network platform to power the offering. ItsOn claims its platform allows for on-device “service experience,” which includes the ability to make purchases, account creation and contextual marketing; quicker deployment of services using its cloud-based architecture; the ability to offered sponsored plans; and automated operating support and business support services.
Sprint signed a deal last month with ItsOn to use its Smart Services Platform to allow for the deployment of new network and mobile services.
–Network function virtualization continues to be a hot topic among wireless carriers, with a recent report from Infonetics Research claiming the latest interest is coming from operators looking to virtualize IP multimedia subsystem deployments.
This revived push into the IMS space was linked to carrier interest in running voice over LTE services across an IMS platform in order to reduce capital expenditures linked to VoLTE.

“Among carriers participating in our latest IMS study, it’s clear that although [VoLTE] is the largest driver for IMS, it also presents new challenges such as a limited set of compatible handsets and a weak business case,” explained Diane Myers, principal analyst for voice over Internet Protocol, unified communication and IMS at Infonetics Reseach. It’ll be tough to justify spending capital on a new network for just voice that represents flat-to-declining revenue, requiring providers to look well beyond running voice over IMS.”
Infonetics found that 83% of carriers plan to deploy VoLTE by 2016 and that “respondents overwhelmingly expressed a desire to run IMS networks in an NFV environment within 2 years.” The research firm noted earlier this year that 29% of wireless carriers surveyed were currently deploying software-defined networking into their networks and 52% plan to evaluate SDN deployments by the end of the year. The survey also found that 97% of those questioned plan to deploy SDN at some point, with 93% saying they plan on deploying NFV.
RCR Wireless News this week spoke with Sanjeev Mervana, senior director for Cisco’s Product and Solutions Marketing, Service Provider Routing and Software division, on the growing need for wireless carriers to adopt virtualization technologies, like network function virtualization.

Make sure to check out the latest in telecom related software news at RCR Wireless News’ dedicated software page. Also, if you have telecom software news to share, please send it along to: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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