News:

April 21, 2004:

ECG today announced the release of NGTelsoft 1.3 (codename "Mekoryuk"), the latest update to its high-performance rating system for telecom service providers. This release adds support for the popular Free-Minutes Plans offered by many providers, and extensive new support for management of the rating and billing process.

• New Free-Minutes Plan support simplifies offering of this popular feature. NGTelsoft's rules-based call selector technology allows free minutes to be applied in powerful and flexible ways.

• Enhanced inventory management provides new reporting of phone numbers and calling card numbers. This release adds flexible and powerful number inventory management, essential for CLECs with large pools of numbers.

• New flexibility in rate-plan management allows for easy and rapid changes with precise results. NGTelsoft allows service providers to adjust rates at any time until bills are sent, making the rates effective on a particular date in the future or the past.

• NGTelsoft's Call Rating Exception ensures that every call is tracked and charged correctly; getting to the root cause of the exceptions is an important task for the service provider. This new release speeds this task by allowing service providers to initiate re-analysis of call rating exceptions. This capability makes the task even more efficient, ultimately improving service provider revenues.

March 29, 2004:

ECG announces new release of high-performance rating system.  ECG, today released Version 1.2 (previously codenamed "Applecross") of its high-performance rating system, NGTelsoft. NGTelsoft 1.2 has been highly anticipated for its features that help service provider personnel add and manage subscribers with unprecedented efficiency. It also adds support for complicated changes in subscriber services - even to automatic issuing of credits for retroactive rate-plan adjustments. According to OSS Engineer Mark Lindsey, "NGTelsoft 1.2 adds features that would be welcomed by the staff of any service provider. Large subscribers can be provisioned with incredible speed, and phone numbers and calling card numbers are easier to manage than ever." These new features improve the quality and reliability of a service provider's bills, and simultaneously speed the work of customer service personnel. Other new features of the NGTelsoft 1.2 release include:

• Powerful new phone number and calling-card number inventory management

• Instant display of numbers available for subscribers

• Quick access to system event log, showing CDR, rating, and subscriber management activity

• Enhanced rating exception reporting, allowing quick identification of billing inconsistencies and accurate billing for every call

• Sophisticated new internal auditing prevents potential billing problems, instantly alerting personnel of the problem

NGTelsoft sets a new standard for price-performance and accuracy for call rating systems. A single NGTelsoft system running on conventional hardware can handle thousands of subscribers and process tens of millions of calls per month. Service providers using NGTelsoft can expect to send consistent, accurate, and auditable bills month after month. Key features of the NGTelsoft system include:

• High performance, standards-based call rating platform

• Powerful, internal consistency checks ensure accurate billing for every call

• Convenient phone number and calling card number inventory management

• Complements existing OSS and billing packages

• Web-based management of subscribers, phone numbers, and calling card numbers

• Comprehensive auditing of personnel activity

• Powerful, hierarchical rate plan designs

• Support for end-office and tandem rating simultaneously

• Invoicing support to track when charges are billed

• Open, programmable API for interfacing to existing systems with open license

• Flexible CDR support, including loaders for AMA BAF, Telica Plexus, Broadsoft, BroadWorks, and others