VimpelCom bought the rights to the source code of the Amdocs billing system kernel

2024: VimpelCom buys back Amdocs billing core source code rights

VimpelCom bought the rights to the source code of the kernel. billing system Amdocs Olga Ramina, director for the development of the radio access network, spoke VimpelCom about this on March 4, 2024. Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to Svetlana Kirsanova, Executive Vice President for Retail Business at VimpelCom, the Amdocs billing system has already been built into the company's common IT infrastructure, based on its own developments.

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Фото: Unsplash

Selling the rights to the kernel source code is tantamount to completely separating the product from its developer, "ComNews Group CEO Leonid Konik told Vedomosti. - Therefore, the cost of such rights can be equated with the price of the product.

He estimated the world-class billing system at 40-50 million subscribers at about $300-400 million. According to Oleg Bratishko, owner of the Typhoon Digital Development venture fund, the cost of the deal between VimpelCom and Amdocs could be $100 million. At the same time, the deal could be made at a significant discount against the background of a difficult sanctions situation, the expert believes.

Timur Rzayev, director of the digital transformation practice at Strategy Partners, says that technically, access to the full source code allows you to mitigate all possible risks of software origin, since the communications industry belongs to a critical information infrastructure, which means it must meet all security requirements.

According to Vedomosti, VimpelCom remained the only telecom operator from the Big Four who did not solve the issue of import substitution in the field of billing systems, which are used to collect information about the use of services and their charging, as well as those responsible for billing subscribers and processing payments. MegaFon uses software developed in conjunction with Nexign. Tele2 has its own billing company, Bercut, with its own developer workforce, and MTS has been using the Foris platform since 2008.^[1]

2004

On January 20, 2004, VimpelCom"" announced the transfer of more than 2.5 million subscribers to. billing platform Amdocs Initially, the Amdocs platform was introduced in 2002 to support VimpelCom's Moscow subscribers. Combining billing and customer service operations on the Amdocs platform allowed Vimpelcom to improve the quality of billing, eliminate roaming settlements between regions, speed up the delivery of accounts to subscribers and increase revenues, as well as reduce operating costs due to the consolidation of data centers, service personnel, customer service centers, efforts to develop and create financial reports. In addition, the Amdocs platform provides unified service delivery and sales in all markets, as well as the ability to launch regional marketing promotions, products and services, while maintaining regional differences. The Amdocs platform also supports Russian for high-quality subscriber service.

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