XACCT Launches XACCTmobile Solutions to Help Wireless Operators Increase Revenue from SMS, Content Streaming and m-Commerce.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

3GSM World Congress 2002

CANNES, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 19, 2002

New Solutions Allow Operators to Monetize Next-Generation Mobile

Data Services

XACCT Technologies, the leading network data management platform for global communications service providers, today announced a suite of solutions that enables operators to realize the revenue potential of next-generation mobile data services. The XACCTmobile Solutions suite includes an SMS Accounting solution, an Advice-of-Charge solution for m-commerce, Content Streaming solution for content-based services, and a Vendor-neutral Charging Gateway.

XACCTmobile, a key element of XACCT's Network-to-Business (N2B(TM)) Platform, was named "Best New Product" by BillingWorld Magazine in 2001, and has been selected by several leading mobile data players including Omnitel Vodafone, Motorola and BT Manx. This field-proven platform offers both real-time and offline collection, correlation aggregation, and filtering of mobile CDRs and service usage data. In addition, it is designed to easily integrate with and distribute service usage data to any downstream OSS/BSS application.

"As 2.5G and 3G networks are deployed, it is critical for network operators to maximize the revenue potential from these networks and new services," said Limor Schweitzer, CTO, XACCT Technologies. "XACCT is dedicated to helping network operators monetize next-generation services quickly and cost effectively. The XACCTmobile Solutions are designed to help mobile operators get higher return on their investment in their networks."

The XACCTmobile Solutions suite includes the following:

SMS Accounting:

Future enhancements to SMS will enable the delivery of longer text messages, graphics and multimedia information. Content and value-based pricing models for these enhanced capabilities will play a key role in the success of next-generation data services such as mobile commerce, mobile banking and rich-media information services.

XACCT's SMS Accounting solution enables network operators to unlock the potential for content or value-based billing of SMS traffic. It highlights imbalances in SMS termination versus origination traffic and significantly reduces lost revenue associated with these imbalances and the costs of SMS transit traffic. XACCT's SMS accounting solution is targeted at mobile operators, GRX operators, SS7 network operators and any operator originating or terminating SMS traffic.

XACCT's N2B platform is able to extract SMS usage information, correlate message units and account for content in real-time. Additionally, the usage records can be guided and distributed to billing, fraud analysis, traffic engineering, customer relationship management or any other OSS/BSS systems an operator may have.

Content Streaming:

With XACCTmobile and XACCT's PacketSight intelligent packet analyzer software, the operators can gain unprecedented visibility into their network data traffic, including comprehensive application and service-level QoS metrics. PacketSight is a software agent that can analyze IP sessions, identify applications and provide the widest range of statistics at session, aggregate and application levels. PacketSight utilizes configurable triggers that define when and what is aggregated and exported to downstream applications, based on operator-defined requirements.

PacketSight's NetStream Recognition Technology dynamically tracks hundreds of thousands of concurrent network conversations, and tracks the allocation of ports and sub-protocols for each conversation. This dynamic protocol coverage provides the most extensive coverage in the market. PacketSight can reconstruct more than 750 network protocols, including the most popular protocols on the Internet such as HTTP. This enables operators to accurately attribute data traffic to specific content services with a comprehensive set of detailed metrics and attributes associated with the content, critical for content-based billing.

The proliferation of mobile devices connected to a network and hundreds of applications running on the network concurrently present a daunting challenge for operators to understand how the whole network is performing at any given time. PacketSight provides data carriers with industry's most advanced QoS monitoring tool. PacketSight captures and analyzes each and every packet on the network with nanosecond timing. For each application PacketSight provides comprehensive QoS metrics, which are attributable to specific services. It analyzes layers two through seven of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model - from the data link layer to the application layer, gathering far more granular data than traditional hardware probes.

With the deployment of 2.5G and 3G networks, and the increased adoption of data services, operators need to have tools for Lawful-Interception of PDP Contexts. They must be able to identify illegal traffic and rogue users, such as user's identity, location and content in the same way as has been in place for traditional voice networks. PacketSight provides PSTN-equivalent capability for the data networks and meets regional legal requirements on network operators for the streaming and storage of individual sessions for inspection by authorities.

Advice-of-Charge for m-commerce:

XACCT's Advice-of-Charge solution allows real-time interaction with heritage (legacy) prepayment systems and e-wallets. These systems can be queried for account balances, money can be deducted and budgets locked-in, order to facilitate real-time m-commerce. Utilizing XACCT's Advice-of-Charge solution eliminates the potential of infinite financial risk associated with post-paid content billing.

The pre-rating capability of XACCT's Advice-of-Charge solution can be used to transform catalogue list-prices into user-specific customized prices. Every time a customer browses the Internet through mobile phones, prices must be transformed dynamically in order to reflect the tariff plan and historical information of the user in order to deliver a more customized, personalized service. In addition to actual rating and pricing, there's additional information that can be presented to the customer in order to justify the resulting price.

XACCT's Advice-of-Charge solution supports third-party content combined with user-specific pricing plans. This is achieved by allowing the external portal access, via XACCT's N2B Platform, which provides the real-time communications infrastructure, to the customer information and rating engine located inside the operator's network.

XACCT's Advice-of-Charge solution for e-commerce and m-commerce service offerings delivers operators with the ability to generate additional revenue through providing customers with targeted services and offers. Operators now have the ability to update in "real-time" the costs of ring-tones and tickets to offer personalized pricing and bundling schemes. For example, customers can buy three ring-tones and receive the fourth one free.

Vendor-neutral Charging Gateway:

XACCT's Vendor-neutral Charging Gateway provides operators with advanced functionality including the ability to collect, correlate and rate billable information, in "real-time", from different sources from anywhere on the network. XACCT's Charging Gateway can interface with hundreds of network devices and software applications. It can either receive call detail records (CDRs) directly from any vendor's GPRS Service Nodes (GSN) or from any vendor's charging gateway. It provides real-time or offline collection, correlation, aggregation, filtering of data from any IP network device and application server, and interoperates with over 100 XACCTready partners' billing/BSS/OSS applications.

About XACCT Technologies

XACCT Technologies provides the leading network data management platform for global communications service providers such as network backbone providers, mobile operators, cable operators and managed services providers. XACCT's carrier-class Network-to-Business (N2B(TM)) platform makes service providers profitable by harnessing network information to create new value-based services and lower operational costs. XACCT offers the industry's first and only platform that enables real-time data capture and enhancement; seamless integration with any business or operations application; and instantaneous, flow-through service provisioning.

XACCT has received numerous awards including "Product of the Year" by Internet Telephony and "Top 50 private companies most likely to change the world" by Red Herring magazine. XACCT investors include Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW), Dell Computer (NASDAQ:DELL), Deutsche Bank (DTBKY:OTC US), Technology Crossover Ventures, Trident Capital, Ampal (NASDAQ:AMPL), Eucalyptus Ventures and Israel Seed Partners. With offices around the globe, XACCT has more than 70 customers, including Bell Canada (NYSE:BCE), Boeing (NYSE: BA), British Telecom (NYSE:BT), Broadwing (NYSE:BRW), Cable & Wireless (NYSE:CWP), COLT (NASDAQ:COLT), Global One, Genuity (NASDAQ:GENU), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Omnitel Vodafone, Siemens (NYSE:SIE), Teleglobe, (NYSE:BCE), TELUS (NYSE: TU), TV Cabo and Verio (NYSE:NTT). The XACCT N2B platform links the network to the business.

Note to Editors: XACCTusage, XDR, XIS, N2B and XACCTmobile are trademarks of XACCT Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Americas Headquarters: XACCT Technologies, 2900 Lakeside Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054, Tel: [phone].

EMEA/APAC Headquarters: XACCT Technologies, 12 Hachilazon Street, Ramat Gan 52522, Israel, Tel: [phone].