Sicap Extends Vimpelcom Capabilities to Consolidate Device Management across CIS

Sicap officially revealed the extent of its long-term partnership with Vimpelcom in Device Management (DM). Systems deployment across all regions of Russia, and in two CIS countries, now enables device management to the vast majority of the operator’s 51 million plus subscribers.

Sicap, initially implemented its Device Management Center (DMC) in the Vimpelcom (TM «Beeline») Russia network in 2005. Considering the scale and potential of the device management tasks scheduled, Vimpelcom needed the assurance of a specialist with a proven track-record in large-scale implementations and with a modular and sustainable architecture capable of accommodating future service and platform evolutions.

The power and capacity to handle large numbers of device updates was rapidly proven in the Russian network, totalling more than 42 million subscribers. The advanced Automatic Device Detection feature of Sicap DMC streamlines the configuration process for the operator, by identifying devices as they arrive in the network for an automatic provisioning of WAP, MMS or GPRS service settings. In July 2006 Vimpelcom ran an advertising campaign with the slogan “GPRS for All” to promote the service. DMC management of devices over-the-air has proved highly successful both in stimulating data traffic and in reducing customer care time spent on configuration queries.

Vimpelcom has since started operations to share the master DMC in Russia by installing homogenous and connected Sicap platforms in subsidiary networks in CIS. To date, no fewer than eleven platforms in Russia and in Ukraine and Kazakhstan operate to correctly set up millions of Vimpelcom subscribers’ devices, whatever their brand or model.

In Kazakhstan, more than 4.6 million customer devices are under remote control since 2007. In Ukraine, Vimpelcom has recently connected a Sicap DMC platform for its approximately 2 million customers. More Vimpelcom CIS countries can be easily connected as market demands develop .

According to Ilya Axelrod, Head of Service Network Development Department at Vimpelcom, “Sicap technology is helping Vimpelcom streamline the device management process across the board. The ability to centralize and control all our member company platforms offers obvious advantages in terms of consolidation and rationalization for the Group”.

Simon HOFER, Managing Director of Sicap Eastern Europe commented that the software was, “built on a sustainable framework and updated regularly with new advanced features for application and firmware management. Our partnership with Vimpelcom will evolve in time to accommodate more subsidiaries and help the Group meet device and network interoperability challenges as they evolve”.