LHS and XACCT Form Strategic Alliance to Bring Usage-Based IP Billing to Telecommunications Industry.

ATLANTA/FRANKFURT/SANTA CLARA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 28, 1999--

Companies Partner to Combine Cutting-Edge IP Mediation

System with Object-Oriented Customer Care and

Billing Software

LHS Group Inc., (NASDAQ: LHSG)(Neuer Markt: LHI) a leading global provider of convergent client/server customer care, billing and customer acquisition software and services for the telecommunications industry, and XACCT Technologies, Inc., the developer of the XACCTusage(TM) metering and mediation solution for IP networks, today announced that they have formed a strategic alliance to bring usage-based IP billing solutions to the telecommunications industry. Under the terms of their agreement, LHS and XACCT will integrate LHS' Customer Care and Billing (CC&B) software, BSCS, and XACCTusage.

As the worlds of voice and data start to converge, telecommunications providers are starting to offer IP-based services such as IP fax, IP telephony, and streaming multimedia. Providers realize simply billing "time on line" for these services is not sufficient; they must bill for them based on a variety of parameters such as type of service, volume of use, bandwidth, and number of transactions. The integration of BSCS and XACCTusage will enable service providers to create accurate, usage-based bills based on a wide range of parameters.

"The telecommunications market is changing significantly, and as a result our customers are continuously rolling out new products," said Hartmut Lademacher, LHS' CEO. "By integrating BSCS with XACCTusage, we give our customers the insight into network usage that will enable them to create new IP services and bill for them appropriately."

"Together, the products of LHS and XACCT offer a powerful solution," said Eric Gries, president and CEO of XACCT. "Integrated with XACCT technology, BSCS provides telecommunications companies with unprecedented data collection, pricing flexibility, billing functionality, and, ultimately, more control over their business."

LHS' flagship product, BSCS, is a scaleable, modular client/server billing and customer care system. It provides convergent billing capabilities for network operators and service providers offering multiple services (e.g. GSM, NMT, CDMA, TDMA, iDEN, AMPS, CATV, ERMES Paging, ISDN, POTS, X.25, Leased Lines, and Calling Cards).

BSCS supports 13 different languages, multi-currency processing and country-specific taxation methods. The Customer Care GUI provides functions (account creation, service provisioning, rate plan and discount plans assignment etc.) to support activation and all aspects of providing excellent customer care to the subscriber. BSCS also offers advanced pricing, discount and promotion components.

Single point of Interface for multi-service networks

XACCT's flagship product, XACCTusage, provides a single point of interface between the IP network infrastructure and the CC&B application for usage data collection as well as automated service provisioning. This multi-source, multi-layer mediation solution captures comprehensive and accurate usage data from a multitude of network elements such as routers, switches, firewalls, and application servers and refines it into XACCT Detail Records, or XDRs(TM), that are analogous to the Call Detail Records (CDRs) generated by telephone switches (exchanges). Service providers can use XDRs to generate flexible, innovative pricing models and usage-based bills.

By leveraging the end-to-end, automated User Account Provisioning capabilities of XACCTusage, service providers can implement self-care or self-registration programs and thus lower call-center costs. Automated provisioning also lets service providers benefit from instant service activation and revenue capture.

About XACCT Technologies

XACCT Technologies, Inc., is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. The company has established itself as the market leader in the emerging IP mediation market. XACCT develops a new class of intelligent software solutions that enable Service Providers and enterprises to accurately account and bill for metered services and applications. Data Communications magazine recognized XACCT as one of the "Top 25 Hot Startups of 1998" and named XACCTusage as one of the "Hot Products of 1999". In addition, XACCT was one of the six companies named to the "Winners Circle: Software Companies to Watch" in Telecommunications magazine's March `99 issue. XACCTusage also received "Most Innovative Billing Product" recognition at the Billing Systems 1999 Conference and Exhibition in April, and Telecommunications named XACCT one of "The Lucky 13" in its June '99 issue. XACCT markets its software directly and through network systems integrators to Service Providers and Fortune 1000 companies. A privately held corporation, XACCT is funded by venture capital investors. More information is available at http://www.xacct.com.

About LHS

LHS is a leading global provider of convergent client/server customer care, billing and customer acquisition software and services to the telecommunications industry. Its over 140 systems are licensed to customers in more than 70 countries, operating in 13 languages. In addition to its Atlanta headquarters, LHS has major offices in Frankfurt, Germany; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Boston and Miami, USA; and Zurich, Switzerland. This year LHS was the recipient of both the "Most Innovative Billing Product" and "Best Contribution to Billing" awards at the Billing Systems 1999 Conference in London. LHS is listed with NASDAQ (LHSG) and on the Frankfurt Neuer Markt Exchange (LHI). For more information, visit LHS' web site at www.lhsgroup.com.