British Telecom has ordered four more ICL Series 39 mainframes on which to run its imminent itemised billing service which is due to be rolled out this year, and also its Telco Finance System: the latter is described as a strategic application area for which ICL will be the main IT supplier, but the contract was awarded to ICL as a consolation prize when Telecom decided to drop it from its multi-million pound Customer Services System project – that was intended to be a dual supplier contract using IBM and ICL kit but was switched solely to IBM – and compatibles – when it hit massive software problems last year; ICL has now picked up UKP24m business from its role in the Telco finance system developmemnt to date although this figure still falls short of the sum it would have trawled if it had been retained as Customer Services System supplier.
