Ericsson Hewlett-Packard Telecommunications AB (EHPT), the two groups’ Swedish joint venture in operation and business support software for the telecoms industry, has sold its Initiator service activitation program to Uppsala-based new carrier Utfors AB. EHPT launched Initiator earlier this month in London. It is a product that enables telcos to activate new services and subscriptions.
Ericsson and HP founded EHPT in 1993 in the town of Molndal. It belongs 60% to the Swedish telecoms equipment manufacturer and 40% by the US IT concern, and as such does not publish separate figures. Product portfolio manager Lars Hamra revealed, however, that it registered revenue of $195m in 1998.
Of that total, roughly two-thirds came from the operation support product line. This includes software for service assurance, management of network elements and faults, as well as performance and configuration management. The other one-third is its business support software, which includes billing, mediation, interconnect settlements and now Initiator.
That segment of the business however, is growing faster, as EHPT seeks to distance itself from its parents in order to position itself as an independent supplier of billing and customer care packages. It is also the side of the business to receive the majority of recent launches.
In addition to Initiator, as well as the latest version of EHPT’s BMP mediation software for both IP and switched networks, the Net-Charger product for IP billing and Safe-Trader, the company’s first venture in content billing for the internet.
Safe-Trader was originally an Ericsson initiative, taken over and productized by EHPT, explained Hamra. An example of the kind of application for it is in internet gaming, where a game provider can distribute the basic software to a player’s PC, then the customer has to go back to its site for a further element each time he or she wants to play. Safe-Trader uses an open protocol called Jalda which, in coordination with a micropayments server, measures the amount of time during which the game is played, then regulates the payment process.
