Telekom Austria : wins VimpelCom Group as a new signaling customer

Vienna, 20 October 2014

Today, customers travel around the world and want to make phone calls, SMS and data transmissions. Signaling for roaming services enables interworking between mobile operators globally. It allows telecommunications providers to authenticate customers, set up connections and bill the volumes consumed. It also allows mobile operators to exchange roaming and messaging traffic (i.e. registration, authentication messages, location update and SMS) between the mobile operator in the foreign country and the mobile operator in the home country of the customer. In order to support mobile communication beyond their borders, network providers need to put in place a high-performance signaling infrastructure in addition to establishing a contractual base with their counterparts. The procedure applies to both voice and data applications.

Signaling customers like VimpelCom Group rely on experienced providers, such as Telekom Austria Group, in order to save costs and time in establishing and maintaining roaming connections and building a future-proof solution for their needs.

Commenting on the executed VimpelCom Group framework agreement Evgeny Ryabov, General Manager and Director of VimpelCom International Services B.V. said, "We believe that Telecom Austria Group will provide us not only with cost-efficient and high-quality signalling services but will allow us to improve roaming value added services provisioning as well. We're looking forward with optimism for a productive cooperation with our new partner".

Telekom Austria Group has a long track record as a signaling provider
"The Telekom Austria Group's wholesale business is one of the ten major signaling partners worldwide for numerous international network providers and we are proud to announce VimpelCom Group as our latest signaling customer," comments Stefan Amon, Director Wholesale at Telekom Austria Group. "Roaming services are essential for any mobile operator who wants to successfully deliver global services to customers. Thus we continuously strive to extend our signaling services to peers globally".

The Telekom Austria Group has long term experience and know-how as a signaling provider. The SS7 signaling service network provides global roaming coverage to end customers, connecting more than 800 roaming destinations within 190 countries. Additionally, the Telekom Austria Group signaling for roaming services includes a variety of options to interconnect, options to automatically convert SMS to match the destination country coding standards, options to have a statistical breakdown of SS7 data as well as an online access to invoices. Furthermore the SS7 signaling services network is operating in the eight mobile markets of the Telekom Austria Group´s subsidiaries with a global GRX/IPX connectivity and 200 Points of Presence globally. The network is 100% GSMA compliant.

Last December Telekom Austria Group was the first provider in Austria to launch a Wholesale Signaling Platform for LTE data roaming. Due to increasing upgrading to LTE, customers' demand for high-speed internet abroad is growing. With LTE signaling service, the Telekom Austria Group Wholesale provides the technical basis for this demand.

About VimpelCom Group
VimpelCom is one of the world's largest integrated telecommunications services operators providing voice and data services through a range of traditional and broadband mobile and fixed technologies in Russia, Italy, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Algeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic. With quarterly revenue of USD 5.1 billion, EBITDA of USD 2.1 billion, and a mobile customer base of 221 million (as of June 30, 2014), VimpelCom is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the industry and has established the scale for successful growth and development of our group of companies going forward.