XaCCT supplying France's Cegetel with value-added services management solution

XaCCT Technologies today announced one of the bigger contracts in the soggy telecommunications market. The Israeli-American company says Cegetel, France's second-biggest cellular provider, has selected XaCCT's data mediation system in a deal worth about $5 million over several years.

Cegetel, part of the Vivendi Universal Group (NYSE:V) and Vodafone network of companies (NYSE:VOD), has about 16 million subscribers and an annual sales volume of €6.4 million.

Cegetal chose the system, which is based on a network to business platform, after eight months of testing. It will be using XACCTmobile to improve its capacity to offer flexible pricing models for its value-added services to cellular subscribers based on UMTS, GPRS and IP systems.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN), the primary systems integrator for the project is partnering with XACCT, it said in a statement.

The XACCT Cegetel business agreement is one of the largest mediation licensing contracts awarded in Europe in 2002, the company says, adding that it has also recent won contracts to supply network data management solutions to Vodafone Omnitel in Italy, SingTel Optus in Australia and Sprint PCS in the U.S., among others.

XACCTmobile provides a real-time link between Cegetel¿s network and its back office business and operations support applications, enabling Cegetel to configure and transform raw network usage data into billing and decision support systems.

Armed with the network usage data, Cegetel will be able to develop flexible pricing options for current and future services.

XaCCT, founded in 1997, develops network data management platforms for telecommunications service providers. Its Network-to-Business platform enables service providers to monetize their network traffic by harnessing network information to create new value-based services and lower operational costs. The company has over 60 customers, including Cable & Wireless, Boeing, and MCI Worldcom.

The company's revenues totaled about $21 million in 2001, and are thought to have remained at about that level in 2002. Its president, Eric Gries, recently commented that XaCCT is expected to achieve profitability from the start of 2003.