01:38 p.m Aug 03, 1999 Eastern

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 1999--Usha Communications Technology today announced a contract with Investcom Global Ltd. to supply a Billing and Customer Care System for the Spacefon network in Ghana.

Usha Communications Technology will supply the Unicorn Billing and Customer Care System and the Medusa Mediation and Provisioning platform for implementation by October this year.

The GSM based Spacefon network is operated by Scancom Ltd. from locations in Accra and Kumasi. Today Spacefon has more than 8000 subscribers. Usha Communications Technology is supplying a license for 20,000 subscribers to allow for expected further growth. Until today the network subscribers were supported by an in-house system. However, growth in the subscriber base and the need for new functionality led to the demand for a new system.

Investcom Global Ltd. selected Usha Communications Technology from a number of potential vendors. The choice for Unicorn was based on the system's functionality and scalability. Investcom Global Ltd. was further attracted by the affordable cost and the unique extended on-site support.

Investcom Global Ltd. is a holding company, formed in 1982, with diverse interests in communications equipment, telecommunications, radio communications and private satellite terminals. Investcom Global Ltd. has interests throughout Africa, The Middle East and in several Commonwealth countries.

Usha Communications Technology's solutions include customer care and billing, mediation, network monitoring, intelligent network platform applications and short message service center. A number of European customers are already successfully using Usha Communications Technology's OSS software, including Swisscom, Telemobil and Jupiter.

Product detail

Unicorn is the name of Usha Communications Technology's customer care and billing product. The product is a modular billing solution designed to be flexible enough to meet the needs of rapidly evolving telecom operators, such as a growth in the number of subscribers. Standard features encompass those usually found only in products that are targeted at very large operators. These include: -- Web access to allow remote access and subscribers to view online

their own account details -- Fixed/wireless convergence to allow operators to issue consumers

with one bill for both their fixed and mobile phone usage

together with cross service discounting. -- Built in trend analysis to allow operators to understand their

customer base better and to anticipate and act on trends in the

market place -- Convergent feature capabilities include wireline, wireless local

loop, international gateway, interconnect, wireless (AMPS, GSM,

PCS, CDMA, TDMA), advanced intelligent network services, paging,

Internet, multimedia and cable networks

Support and Services

Usha Communications Technology also provides extensive support and services to customers. This includes customization of products, migration services, installation and a `business assurance program'. This provides operational engineers on site for six months to further ensure the customer's success by identifying and resolving any issues, and by training the local staff.

About Usha Communications Technology

Usha Communications Technology creates billing, customer care, provisioning, mediation and performance monitoring and analysis software for telephone companies. It has offices in the USA, Asia, South America and Europe and employs over 300 people.