Alestra migrates voice and data service

Mexican telco Alestra plans to migrate its voice and data services to a platform from US solution provider MetaSolv, MetaSolv's senior VP for marketing and product management David Sharpley told BNamericas. Alestra will use the new solution, which went live on Saturday (August 14), to automate delivery of voice and data services over multiple vendors' network equipment. It chose the solution after conducting technical testing on other competing technologies. Previously, Alestra was using a legacy system. MetaSolv's support for numerous hardware vendors' elements was one of the factors guiding Alestra's decision, the operator's IT director Rogelio Ancira said in a statement. In Alestra's case, the MetaSolv solution works by taking a subscriber request for a new service package and submitting it to the different elements in the network to activate those services. Once complete, an acknowledgement is sent to the billing department and to the customer. "What MetaSolv does in this instance is effectively map the network complexities and insulate the network from the actual services provided to the customer, then activate those services in a high-volume way," Sharpley said. Sharpley was unable to disclose the amount of the deal beyond saying it was of "reasonable" size. MetaSolv has over 25 telecoms operator customers in the Caribbean and Latin American region and expects to grow its business there even further in the future. "This announcement will enable Alestra to leverage not only core voice and data but [also help it] migrate into voice over IP," Sharpley said.