CHENNAI, February 23: Mach India and Satyam Dan Net are all set to offer clearing-house services to cellular operators in the country. Mach India is a subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based Mach SA, and Satyam DanNet is a joint venture between Satyam Computer Services Ltd and Dan Net (an independent subsidiary of the Copenhagen Telephone Company, Denmark) and IBM Denmark.The two companies have been shortlisted by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), among four contenders including Electronic Data Systems and Swiss Clearline.
Mach SA and Dan Net are internationally acclaimed clearing-house firms. Mach has a client base in 91 countries while Dan Net offers its services in 40 countries worldwide.
Since the department of telecommunications (DoT) cleared automatic-roaming services, the two companies have speedily developed the requisite software and are ready to offer their services to the industry. Automatic roaming is a concept which allows a cellular subscriber to make and receive callsanywhere in the world. This involves transactions between the cellular operators including call-data transactions and financial settlements. The clearing house would handle the call transactions and simplify the procedure by keeping track of the subscriber in different networks and handling the revenue sharing between the operators.
Mach India director (sales and marketing) Sanjay Manohar said, "Mach believes that the demand for cellular phones and roaming in the country will grow at the rate of 70 per cent between 1997 and 2002 and we see ourselves as a long-term player."
Apart from the clearing house operations for domestic operators, Mach is also examining the possibility of making India the hub for the Asia Pacific clearing house operations of Mach SA, the parent company. So far Mach has invested Rs 10 crore in the country.
Satyam Data Net in-charge (India operations) Ajay Malkowthekar said, "We are very enthusiastic about roaming and look at it as a major opportunity for the domestic cellularindustry to harness the global cellular market. The needs of the local cellular operators are unique in terms of localisation of services. Satyam has developed a fully integrated system for plastic roaming leveraging on the experience gained from implementing billing and customer care solution for seven GSM operators."
And customisation indeed seems to be the key word. Both Mach and Satyam Dan Net have developed software to accommodate `plastic roaming', that is roaming using SIM cards for different networks, which the cellular operators in the country already offer their subscribers.
And the another issue unique to the Indian operators is in terms of revenue sharing. The DoT ceiling on the tariff to susbscribers prevents a cellular operator from charging more for a roaming call. Hence the revenue needs to be shared between the home network of the subscriber and the visiting network. This problem of revenue sharing has also been incorporated in the software for the clearing houses.
The services offeredby Mach and Satyam DanNet include data clearing, financial clearing and negotiation of roaming agreements with overseas cellular operators. Apart from this Mach also offers fraud management services and GSM training for the operators.
Mach would charge an operator Rs 10,000 per month flat and 28 paise per call data record which is run by the software. Apart from this there would be a charge of Rs 20,000 per month on the fraud management services offered. Manohar says, "We have a competitively priced package which offers higher benefits to our clients." The financial data clearing comes free of cost.
Both the companies have been negotiating with the operators in the country, to enlist their clearing house services. The cellular operators are expected to sign up within the next fortnight, since many plan to introduce automatic roaming in March.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
