Nextra, a subsidiary of Telenor, is a communications service provider serving European businesses via a network of companies located throughout 12 European countries.

Having launched its IP telephony business in late 1999, Nextra quickly captured the leading position in Eastern Europe’s newly deregulated IP telephony industry. It credits much of its success to the PortaOne billing platform.

Nextra implemented the PortaOne billing solution in less than two weeks, and uses PortaBilling to rapidly develop, price, and provision VoIP services. With our help, Nextra has seized new revenue opportunities, and now boasts over 2 million customers.

Objective

To maintain its leading market position, Nextra needed to respond to growing competition in the European telecommunications/ISP market. Nextra set the goal of becoming the leading VoIP provider in Eastern Europe by offering its subscribers multiple value-added services. To do this, the company required a customer care and billing system that would support broadband, convergent, and value-added services for its rapidly growing subscriber base.

Solution

After comparing the leading billing solutions for communications services, Nextra selected the PortaBilling platform, since it was the most robust and cost-effective solution available. Nextra was also impressed with PortaBilling because it enabled rapid deployment of multiple services and pricing models, at the same time easily scaling to support millions of customers.

In cooperation with Nextra’ marketing and technical departments, PortaOne created a diverse range of business services on top of the billing platform’s base functionality. Working together, these services and products have provided Nextra with a new competitive edge, solidifying its position as the top alternative telephony carrier in Central Europe.

Results

Nextra values PortaBilling for enabling the company to further diversify its voice services by delivering products that are highly attractive to its customers. As Nextra continues to exceed its sales targets for voice traffic, the company is satisfied with the positive ROI PortaOne has brought the business.

Current Nextra VoIP data:

• 150 routers
• 60,000,000 browsable CDRs
• traffic at 5,000,000 min/month

According to Nextra Czech’s Senior System Engineer, Jan Dusak,

“PortaBilling increases our competitive edge and attracts more users by enabling prepaid services, credit/debit/rechargeable card transactions, and wholesale traffic in a gatekeeper/proxy environment. In addition, PortaOne allows us to provide flexible pricing options, and we can introduce new value-added services at any time. The PortaBilling system is unbelievably robust, flexible and stable.”