There are many players in the evolving ecosystem of connected cars. The natural players - automobile manufacturers - are now competing against companies such as Apple and Google, not just in the autonomous car market – which is still in its infancy – but in the entire industry of connected cars.

BillRun’s management team participated in the AfricaCom exhibition and conference for telecommunications which took place in Cape Town, South Africa in mid-November.

Ariel Halperin – recruited recently as BillRun’s development and QA manager – shares his insights on how ‘Scrum’ – a term deriving from rugby – helps instill an esprit de corps to build teams that operate effectively as one force in the dynamic cloud and IoT environments.

“I had just landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport in May of 2012, after returning from a J & Beyond conference about open-source technology. When I switched on my phone I had numerous urgent messages from the IT team of Golan Telecom – a leading Israeli mobile operator. This would be the official beginning of a snowball effect, which would result eventually in the phenomenon known today as BillRun.

Two years later, in October 2014 we signed the MT contract - our first international client - and expanded our workforce to 10 employees, including developers and project managers. In addition to replacing MT’s billing and CRM systems, we provided guidance on open-source ESB Apache ServiceMix, as well as consulting on Joomla CMS. In May 2015 we launched our first open-source landline and internet system - in MT - and in November we replaced the remaining 2Play for mobile and VOD. The transition to a unified billing system enabled MT to offer its customers more diverse, comprehensive plans.

Tel Aviv, September 21, 2016. Installed at Pelephone, the new system – the only one of its kind in Israel – enables instantaneous usage computation, and the management of both prepaid and post-paid customers, while also supporting IoT services. The estimated cost of the entire project is 500,000 euro.

Pelephone has upgraded its billing system for Prepaid mobile subscribers, to an advanced, state-of-the-art open-source system developed by BillRun Technologies – based also Israel. In the near future, Pelephone plans to expand the system’s capabilities, to enable real-time calculation of data usage of all the company’s subscribers. The system, designed to handle a vast number of access points, will support IoT devices, with the expansion of coverage of IoT infrastructure.

The new billing system is part of the company’s implementation of an entire infrastructure designed to meet the growing demand for online charging systems (OCS). Notably, online charging requires the assessment and processing  of all components of the transaction, including data usage computation - in real time. The same technology will serve as a framework for billing for IoT services, as well as charging postpaid customers and other areas of billing.