Tata Communications, Bharti Telesoft join hands to launch CAMEL eXchange in global markets

Tata Communications today announced a partnership with Bharti Telsoft to launch its Intelligent CAMEL eXchange (ICX), a value-added service that enables mobile operators to significantly reduce the time frame, cost of implementing and maintaining ICX roaming partnerships.

Tata Communications had deployed the ICX to facilitate prepaid roaming for four of the world's largest mobile services operators on a limited availability basis, allowing them to open up Camel -based roaming to one of China's largest mobile phone operators in time for the Beijing Olympic Games. Based on the vastly successful outcome of Beijing, the Camel service is now available to support live traffic to other destinations, opening the floodgates to destinations outside of China.

With 10 operators already connected to the Camel platform, Tata Communications currently offers Camel roaming and connectivity to China, the UK, Romania, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sweden.

"Our trial participants are now able to open service to other destinations to help them go beyond Beijing and fast track their roaming reach around the world," said Allan Chan, executive vice president, mobility services for Tata Communications.

Tata Communications said that over 30 additional operators  would use the service globally to offer mobile network operators and said it would put the Camel  roaming on the fast track for key roaming partners globally.

"Directly confronting the interoperability challenges operators face when expanding into developing markets with highly complex networks, the Intelligent Camel eXchange facilitates the implementation of Camel roaming agreements through intelligent signaling, monitoring, and normalisation," said Tata Communications in a staement. This technology solution, which was developed in partnership with Bharti Telesoft, enables mobile operators to increase efficiency in implementing Camel Roaming relationships, it said..

"While we are known in the mobile market for our numerous platforms to mobile network operators, this collaboration with Tata Communications marks our entry in the Managed Services area", says Mao Mohapatra, CEO of Bharti Telesoft. "The ability to serve mobile carriers in this capacity is an exciting step for Bharti Telesoft. We are very enthusiastic about the potential of serving mobile carriers this way and look forward to a promising future in our collaboration with Tata Communications."

As part of the ICX offering Tata Communications manages the monitoring and troubleshooting of Camel roaming issues within Camel service-users, in turn, enhancing resource utilisation of the mobile operators as well guaranteeing service availability to roamers of Camel. In addition to expediting the Camel roaming establishment process, Camel also reduces the need for capex investments in network configuration modifications for service users.

Last month Tata Communications had launched a new Global VPN Extended Access Service  (See: Tata Communications introduces 'global VPN extended access" service in over 150 countries and Tata Communications' CDN service powered by BitGravity for interactive broadcasting. See: Tata Communications, BitGravity introduce global CDN network