• To Deliver New Levels Of operational improvement, Product Agility And Flexibility

By Oystein Bergmann, Correspondent Scandinavia

Ericsson and Telefônica Brazil, trading as Vivo, have signed a six-year agreement which will make Ericsson Charging the strategic monetization platform for Vivo’s prepaid, postpaid, and hybrid-consumer and enterprise-convergent charging requirements. Vivo is the largest Latin American subsidiary of the international Telefónica Group.

The standards-based, cloud-native Ericsson Charging solution will serve the nearly 100 million Vivo Customers based on an OpenStack-based deployment within Vivo’s private cloud platform. Ericsson Charging will replace or be consolidated with legacy business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) charging platforms, resulting in optimized cost and agility across Vivo operations.

Highly configurable network services are expected to play a major role in the digital transformation of industries in the 5G era. These will also drive new requirements for charging operations.

Chief Information Officer, Vivo, André Kriger says: “We want to drive the digital transformation in Brazil by giving our customers the best experience. We chose the Ericsson Charging solution because of its advanced technology and ability to support us in accelerating time to market for new products and services, delivering optimized operational costs, and improving our overall customer experience with real-time information.”

This agreement builds on the long-term Ericsson-Vivo partnership. In 2012, Ericsson was selected by Vivo as its Business Support Systems (BSS) provider to help support its s large user network. This latest collaboration will ensure that Vivo is equipped with the capabilities to address future market demands. It also allows Vivo to build on the skills of local Ericsson teams to drive the project forward.

General Manager, Ericsson Latin America South, Eduardo Ricotta says: “Telefônica Vivo is clear in how it wants to drive its evolution to the future and 5G ambitions and we are helping to deliver that vision in Brazil. It is another great example of how service providers can benefit from Ericsson’s BSS leadership. In this case, the Ericsson Charging solution enables service providers to realize, create, and capitalize on new digital opportunities.”