Announcing this here on Monday, Usha Beltron vice-chairman Prashant Jhawar said that the agreement provided for joint sales and marketing of Usha Communications Technology's billing and customer care products.

Formerly known as UBEST, Usha Communications' feature-rich software running on Microsoft and Windows NT, coupled with the advanced hardware technology of Proliant Series, provides economic scalability not available until now. Emergent operators, resellers, and the up-and-coming telecom providers will now be able to compete very effectively with the incumbent and large carriers. Features such asUsha Communications' Internet Customer Care would allow these tier three operators significant competitive advantage by providing web self-care and other facilities subscribers desired, he said. Usha Communications is developing a new product -- pre-paid solution of intelligence network platform. This is a most secured operation and will be fraud-free.

Initially, it will be used for billing cellular phone operations and then for billing basic telecom services and all their variations. In future it could be used for making electricity, gas and other bills.

He said Usha Communications had applied for membership of Wireless Application Protocol Forum last week and expected that the membership would be offered soon. Jhawar claimed that the company, which had reported Rs 14 crore turnover in 1998-99, would become a Rs 100-crore company in a span of four years.

Usha Communications offers a comprehensive portfolio of operations support system for established second and third tier telecommunications operatorsaround the world. It pioneered a product line based on their unique Microsoft Windows NT-to-Unix scalable platform, resulting in a new level of price/performance for telecom operations having up to one million subscribers.

In addition, it maintains a consulting service group capable of rapid design and deployment of customised solutions.