| Comfone eNews December 2009 |
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Clearing Services - innovative new IOT Tool
Recognising that mobile service operators around the world are spending an increasing amount of time and resources defining their Inter-Operator Tariffs (IOTs), Comfone developed a new, helpful instrument for mobile operators, the interactive Rating Simulation Tool. It empowers operators to easily calculate the impact of changes to their IOT on their roaming revenue, both for wholesale and retail rates. Redefining a rating structure is a complex matter and customers required a simplified process to help them regain control of their roaming revenue. The Comfone interactive Rating Simulation Tool was developed to simplify the analysis, definition and implementation of various rating models. Currently in its final successful testing phase, the Comfone Rating Simulation Tool will be available online in the first quarter of 2010. Read more about the new Comfone Rating Simulation Tool
Win with Comfone Roaming Marketing
With roaming marketing during an event like the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa, mobile service providers could raise awareness about roaming and mobile use abroad. Why not offer subscribers special “home team” discounts on calls back home during days that your national team plays. Or offer discount levels on call bundles or Family & Friends packages - calls from family members are charged at discount rates as they are received when roaming. Or even create seasonal campaigns based on holiday destinations, or support important events at home such as elections or offer emergency alert services. This is just the tip of the roaming marketing potential for mobile service providers! The opportunities are vast. For successful roaming marketing campaigns, mobile service providers require flexible billing system capabilities which not only ensure prompt handling of CDR’s but also support the marketing scenarios and campaign timelines which they define. Comfone’s flexible roaming clearing services fully support both volume and cap based roaming marketing and can easily accommodate the individual marketing scenarios and time frames defined by service providers. Surprising your subscribers with innovative roaming marketing offers will increase your marketing power and your end users' mobile roaming usage as they take full advantage of the opportunities provided.
Do you see the potential for increasing your roaming revenue through roaming marketing?
Comfone recognised for its active GSMA participation
The GSMA has once again acknowledged Comfone’s special efforts and engagement and has distinguished two Comfone employees. Mauro Mele and Philippe Erard have received special awards from TADIG and IREG respectively for their contributions to these working groups throughout 2009. Comfone will continue its commitment and efforts for the GSMA and is looking forward to hosting several sub-group meetings (AGREE, RING & AIR) at its head office in early February 2010. A major focus of the RING agenda will be the finalisation of the requirements for the RAEX AA.14, including support for multiple IOTs and roaming hubbing environments. Subsequently, these requirements will be handed over to the AIR group to then define the related specifications for approval by TADIG by November 2010. The scheduled implementation date set by the GSMA is October 1, 2011.
Comfone Academy 2009 – what a year! 
The Comfone Academy is the centre of excellence dedicated to transferring the specialised know-how necessary in international roaming to Comfone’s customers. The Comfone Academy offers courses both at its headquarters in Switzerland and on customer location upon request. 2009 was a record year for the Comfone Academy with 11 trainings delivered in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and more than 170 participants highlighting how important roaming knowledge and the building up of the same is to our customers.
Some Academy highlights included the roaming hubbing training for African operators in Nairobi, the pan-Brazilian international roaming training held in Rio de Janeiro where 38 participants from the five biggest Brazilian operators took part and the Spanish-language roaming hubbing training for Latin American operators in Bolivia. Comfone trainer Manuel Lopez summarises: “The most important roaming topics for our customers were roaming pricing and wholesale discounts, roaming revenue assurance, and CAMEL prepaid roaming. We, of course, keep adapting and enhancing our courses to address the most important topics for our customers. This year we introduced the Roaming Hubbing course which aroused great interest. It is a 2 day course covering various roaming relations in hubbing scenarios including, for example, connectivity options for roaming hubbing, invoicing and financial flows, fraud prevention procedures in roaming hubbing and the exchange of roaming information between partners.”
The Comfone Academy will offer roaming training courses next year in 4 sessions already scheduled for February, May, August and November at its head office in Bern, Switzerland. To register for one of these trainings, click here. Additionally, roaming training courses will be available on customer sites around the world upon customer request.
Have you already participated in a Comfone Academy course? Then join the Comfone Academy Alumni group today.
Having managed the settlement division in the roaming department of MTS Uzbekistan, Anvar Umurzakov brings extensive know-how to the central Asian region, where there are 20 mobile operators and more than 42 million of active subscribers. Alone the subscriber base of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan accounts for 79% of the market. Comfone provides a wide range of Swiss quality services to all countries and almost all mobile operators in the region. As Anvar Umurzakov explains, there is strong competition in central Asia but as part of an experienced sales team and supported by leading roaming specialists, he is looking forward to meeting both existing and new customers in his region. If you would like to contact Anvar Umurzakov, please email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Maintain control with Online Reporting
Via secure internet access, Comfone provides an around-the-clock online reporting tool linked to our production environment offering customers an extensive variety of reports. Customers can validate their service invoices, synchronise their systems with Comfone’s live data and they can monitor their data with Comfone. Online reporting is available for Comfone’s Signalling, GRX and Financial Clearing services and for the GCS, MMS and SMS Hubbing solutions. Beginning in 2010, Comfone is enhancing its Online Reporting service to include Key2roam, one of the largest roaming hubs in the world. Reports available for Key2roam offer:
If you would like to learn more about Comfone’s Online Reporting tool including Key2roam, contact your Comfone sales representative today.
Latest Press Releases
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The year 2010 is going to be a very eventful year. Global events such as the Winter Olympic Games in Canada or the Football World Cup mobilise the attention of millions of people and media and vastly increase the need for mobile communication. For mobile service providers, these are perfect opportunities to utilise the exciting possibilities offered by Comfone’s roaming marketing support.
As an associate member of the GSMA, Comfone supports and actively contributes to all relevant GSMA working groups. Comfone holds chairmanship of the TADIG-AIR sub-group and editorship for over 10 GSMA permanent reference documents (PRDs).
Comfone is happy to introduce Anvar Umurzakov, our new Sales Director in the region of central Asia and Mongolia, which is made up of the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan along with Mongolia. This region has huge potential in the provision of mobile services and is attracting large multinational mobile operator groups like MTS and Beeline who are bringing with them international experience, new services, lower prices and technological innovation.
In order to empower our customers to manage their roaming business as efficiently and easily as possible, Comfone is continuously developing and providing value-added services to its customers. One of the most utilised tools Comfone offers customers is 
In the November issue of the Communications Africa magazine, Comfone CEO Mathias Prüssing expressed his views on the challenges facing the roaming business, Comfone's role and future in the roaming industry and the importance of the African market for the company.