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The past three years have seen Dutch mobile operator Odido transform its billing systems in order to accommodate next-generation 5G-based services, including network slicing. Key to its success has been close collaboration with its partners.
Joanne Taaffe, TM ForumSponsored by:
Odido transforms billing to meet 5G service innovation
Odido ran the fastest mobile network in the Netherlands throughout 2024, according to Ookla's global connectivity measurements, reflecting its investment in 5G network performance. Now the Dutch communications service provider (CSP) is building on its connectivity strengths by rolling out new 5G-based services, following adoption of Ericsson Billing, a cloud-based billing software system on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“We have made a huge investment in [5G] in the last several years. We've the biggest, best 5G network in the Netherlands, and it was really important for us that we had the capability to be able to bring new 5G products to the market,” says Robert Purdy, CIO of Odido, in a video interview with TM Forum.
Until early 2022, Odido was 75% owned by Deutsche Telekom and 25% by Tele2, when the company was sold to WP/AP Telecom Holdings, a joint venture between private equity companies Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners.
Formerly known as T-Mobile Netherlands, the CSP grew its mobile market share from 25% to 42% under Deutsche Telekom’s majority ownership. Since then it has retained a leading share of the Dutch market under the name Odido, bolstered by sustained investment in 5G.
However, the billing systems Odido inherited “were heavily customized and a bit inflexible, which presented barriers in terms of time to market”, explains Purdy, particularly when it came to innovative product launches. “Looking towards where the telecoms industry is heading with 5G capabilities such as network slicing, operators need more sophisticated billing mechanisms which don’t follow a traditional model.”
So, in 2022 Odido set about overhauling its billing systems. A key criterion when choosing a supplier was the ability to host the software in the public cloud.
“It would have been in some sense easier to do it on premise or in the private cloud, but we wanted to do it on the public cloud, because we wanted that scalability, the security and the resilience,” says Purdy.
In addition, Odido wanted a single billing platform for consumer and B2B services.
Another critical factor was using the expertise of two key vendors: Wipro, a systems integrator experienced with the CSP's legacy billing systems, and AWS, Odido's primary cloud services supplier.
“The collaboration between the three parties was the key thing. You can have great software, but if you can’t find partners who can collaborate with each other [on] a shared outcome, then it’s very difficult,” points out Purdy. Ericsson, which already provided networking equipment as well as Service Order Management and Inventory solutions to Odido, ticked all the boxes.
Together the companies succeeded in migrating five million customers to Ericsson Billing without any errors over a single weekend in August 2024, thanks to carefully co-ordinated planning, testing and execution. They had already gained insight into how the process would run when they transferred the nearly one million customers of Odido’s MVNO, Ben, to the new system in November 2023.
“We did that first because it was slightly simpler in terms of the propositions and … the billing solutions,” explains Purdy.
The collaborating teams then repeatedly ran test billing operations for the largescale migration using live data until they were confident the changeover would be error free and imperceptible to customers.
“You have to allow yourself time,” even if it means moving deadlines, advises Purdy, adding that the company’s CEO described the complexity of the process as “doing open heart surgery while you're running a marathon”.
The intense preparation paid off. “We practiced, practiced, practiced to get ready for that weekend. We had a really strong run book. And thankfully, it went without a hitch. We got into … live bill runs the following day, and we had zero errors,” says Purdy.
As a result of the migration, overall individual bill runs are 30% faster, rising to as much as five times faster for complex B2B bills, according to Purdy. In addition, the company has gained in operational flexibility, resilience and scalability.
“We haven't had any outages, or any issues operationally whatsoever. Everything we had hoped to do from an operations perspective, we've seen that come true in spades,” says Purdy.
Importantly, the new cloud-native billing system is already facilitating product rollouts enabled by scale and flexibility, including the launch of Odido’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service launch across the Netherlands in October last year. “It has been a huge, huge success,” says Purdy.
Customers, meanwhile, have greater flexibility in setting their billing preferences. And, says Purdy, scalability led to customer experience benefits during the launch of the new iPhone in 2024.
“We used the automatic scaling that we had in AWS, and we didn’t have to queue it,” he says. “That is the kind of vision that we want to move towards in terms of our services generally … of automatic management … and very low-touch operations, and the ability to scale.”
The system will also help Odido use AI tools it has developed internally to gain deeper insight into why customers contact the company about billing. Its aim is to pre-empt and resolve issues using AI to identify invoice anomalies to either correct in advance or proactively contact customers and explain what is happening.
In the meantime, the company will continue to innovate around 5G.
“We've got things in the pipeline … [around] 5G which we'll be bringing to the market, and this flexibility and … sophistication in our billing platform is going to be key to that,” says Purdy.
