Tema Networks develops billing and Value Added Services (VAS) solutions for mobile network operators around the world. Based in Finland, Tema Network's management team are seasoned professionals with a combined experience of over 40 years, holding senior level positions within leading suppliers to the Communications industry.
The Business Challenge
Mobile device penetration among consumers is already saturated in many developed markets, with active mobile accounts actually exceeding population levels in some countries. To sustain growth, mobile operations need to find new sources of revenue and enter new market segments.
As mobile network speeds increase and mobile devices become more functional, so there are opportunities to deliver enhanced, data-driven services to subscribers. Such Value Added Services are therefore one means for operators to develop new revenue streams. To address new market segments, many operators are promoting the concept of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), enabling users to roam seamlessly between wired and wireless networks on a single device, thereby extending their communications capability.
The MySQL Solution
The database plays a key role in any new communications and billing service due to the high data volumes coupled with demanding performance and availability requirements. This is especially true of Tema Network’s Home Zone Billing solution which needed a proven database with many millions of customer deployments and readily-available best practices for development and deployment.
Because the HZB system provides real time tariffing for both pre and post-paid subscribers, Tema Networks needed a database system capable of maintaining the most stringent throughput and availability requirements, while delivering a consistent response time of just a few milliseconds. For their new customer, Tema Networks had to deploy the HZB system over five sites, up to 6,500 kilometers apart, separated by remote terrain and spanning seven different time zones. The database is distributed across these sites and must maintain data consistency and integrity at all times while also achieving high availability.
MySQL Embedded Server
After evaluating different open source and proprietary databases, Tema Networks selected MySQL as their database vendor of choice. MySQL Embedded Server 5.1 with its fully integrated transaction-safe, ACID compliant storage engine offering full commit, rollback, crash recovery and row level locking capabilities has enabled Tema Networks to meet their demanding database requirements. It has also provided the ease of use that has made MySQL the industry’s leading open source database.
By selecting MySQL Embedded Server, Tema Networks receive access to the latest binaries with predictable quarterly updates, comprehensive monitoring tools to optimize query performance and reduced management costs, and technical support to ensure continuous availability of the database.