Africa's Carriers Invest in SPIT

The burgeoning mobile services market in Africa is fueling demand for Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) systems that can support the back office needs of the continent's operators, as well as generating new business for wireless infrastructure vendors (as we noted Tuesday -- see Africa's Wireless Gold Rush).

Here are a few of the deals announced by software systems suppliers such as FTS (London: FTS), The Now Factory , Celcite Management Solutions , Astellia and Redknee Inc. (Toronto TSX: RKN) around this week's AfricaCom trade show in Cape Town.

Zimbabwe's national operator TelOne has deployed FTS's Leap Billing system for a range of tasks, including convergent billing and charging, interconnect billing, invoicing, order management, customer management, network management and mediation.

South African operator Vodacom Pty. Ltd. , which has 31 million customers, is using The Now Factory's Mobile Moments Vantage system as part of its plans to monitor its data services and optimize customer experience metrics. The news follows last week's announcement that Vodafone Ghana, which has 4.3 million customers, has chosen The Now Factory to monitor its customers' mobile data service experiences. (See Vodafone Goes to The Now Factory for CEM.)

MTN South Africa has chosen Celcite's network optimization offering to help manage its 2G and 3G networks. The operator will use the COPS-AIC software for root cause analysis of network problems.

Vodacom Mozambique has deployed Astellia's VIP Care customer experience management (CEM) solution. The software is designed to help service providers monitor the service quality being experienced by their customers.

Malea Multimedia Mobile and Services (Malea MMS) is to use billing and charging software from Redknee to support the launch of its services in Niger. The Canadian vendor already has a number of engagements in sub-Saharan Africa. (See Redknee Wins Congo Deal and Bintel Expands With Redknee.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading