Efficient billing key to ongoing altnet success

Having built its reputation as a billing provider for the telecoms industry, PRD Technologies has begun expanding into other sectors, and fibre remains firmly in its sights.

PRD Technologies began its life in 2006, founded by Simon Adams, amidst a time of significant change within the telecommunications sector.

Industry deregulation was the catalyst for a rapid evolution of the market and demands on billing systems software were becoming increasingly complex.

In response, PRD created Intelligent Billing to handle high-volume secure data processing more efficiently.

Now, as the UK fibre sector undergoes its own rapid evolution, PRD is aiming to provide the same critical support role to altnets and ISPs.

Adams points out that despite huge funding, economic conditions are making it challenging, targets are being missed and redundancies are made to cut costs to improve ROI for investors.

Fast and accurate billing will underpin altnet success going forward, says Adams, focusing on success shifting from homes passed to homes connected. He said: “Fibre Providers must now differentiate via exceptional customer experience and must connect customers quickly to appease stakeholders.”

With the starting gun fired for consolidation, bringing together separate companies under a single portal will also be critical.

“We are looking to empower our customers to rapidly adapt in an ever-changing complex volatile landscape, taking advantage of new market opportunities as they arise,” added Adams.

This was evidenced by PRD’s collaboration with WightFibre, which kicked off in 2022, as the altnet’s Gigabit Island Project looked to deploy full fibre broadband to over 60,000 homes and businesses across the Island by 2023.

To help WightFibre achieve this, PRD Technologies developed a bespoke ‘ISP version’ of its Intelligent Billing solution for the altnet.

The solution was completely cloud-based and integrated with other WightFibre third-party systems for speedier streamlined operations, resulting in the automated environment crucial for successfully implementing and managing a fibre broadband project of this scale.

Adams said: “Automations have resulted in significant time and cost-savings due to the reduction of manual processes and elimination of human error. Our task as ISP billing software experts is to create a system that has zero or very minimal manual inputs, saving on time and cost at the same time as eliminating the margin for human error.

“As implementation progressed, WightFibre continued their journey of discovery with us. They discovered more about Intelligent Billing’s capabilities and expanded the scope of the project beyond the original tender specifications. This will lead to greater benefits for their business in the longer-term.”

The solution enabled WightFibre to instantly start collecting, processing and issuing over 25,000 invoices per month, with flexibility to seamlessly scale in line with the rollout across the Island.”

As WightFibre progresses with its build, PRD will help the altnet increase to 35,000 and more homes/ invoices monthly.

According to Adams, PRD aims to replicate the success of this partnership widely across the industry in 2024 onwards.

He said: “The roadmap is to continue developing our roadmap and continue to deliver the best technology to ensure we can be the established go-to ISP billing vendor of choice.

“This will include continuing to push boundaries, introducing new automations and integrations and innovating methods for taking the pain out of billing.”