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Eutelsat
Eutelsat approached Hydra with the need to automate their processes related to resellers, and to implement complex billing that reflects the satellite Internet industry specifics.
Eutelsat is a European satellite operator that provides coverage of the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, North and South America. The Eutelsat ecosystem includes 36 satellites, hundreds of broadcasters and video service providers, ISPs and government agencies. In terms of revenue, it is the world’s largest satellite operator.
  • Needs
    • The necessity of complex billing implementation, which would include automation of the resellers' typical tasks.
    • Considering the specifics of Eutelsat as a satellite operator, it required a deep integration with satellite equipment and wide customization options.
    • Striving to increase sales, expand the subscriber base and improve the quality of the services provided.
  • Issues
    • The previous billing solution lacked flexible rating and integration with the accounting, as well as marketing tools enough to launch campaigns.
    • There was no sufficient provisioning with the satellite hub, which caused delays in the data accounting. Customers frequently exceeded the service limits, which is unacceptable for satellite Internet and leads to significant losses.
    • Inability to scale up and have customizations with the previous billing.
    • The lack of integration between the billing systems of Eutelsat and its largest dealer, Tricolor. It was necessary to create a subscriber account twice in both billing systems, and manually synchronize the data between them.
“
When we got the experience of network operation and subscribers' management, within one or two years, we realized that the criterion of choosing the previous billing solution — the specifics of satellite communications consideration — was actually not the most critical one. Scalability and customizability are more important for us. At last, all our requests met with a positive response, so we chose Hydra.
— Ernest Wong, Chief Technical Officer at Eutelsat
Solution and implementation
"The project was rather complex and atypical for our team, but the migration of dealers and setting up a system to work with them was completed successfully and on time — in less than a year".

— Penko Vinogradov, Head of Implementation Team at Hydra
  • Provisioning
    The provisioning was improved over the previous one. We made it possible to integrate with both the provider’s Cisco BRAS and Gilat satellite hub directly, and configure the interaction in such a way that avoids unnecessary expenses related to accounting.

    The Gilat Hub does not support the RADIUS protocol, so Hydra interacts with it using an event mechanism. For example, when a subscriber is created in the billing system, information about this event is sent to the satellite hub via API. Cisco equipment, meanwhile, was integrated using the RADIUS protocol.
“
A specific feature of the business process of a new customer connection in the case of Eutelsat was the requirement to determine whether the client is within the satellite signal coverage area. For this purpose, we integrated the platform with the qGIS service. A map was loaded onto it, and a layer describing the company’s coverage was added. They are used to check the connectivity via GPS coordinates.
— Penko Vinogradov, Head of Implementation Team at Hydra
  • Integration with 1C:Accounting
    The interaction with 1C Accounting was set up, and now the company can upload all the necessary information from the billing directly into 1C in the required format.
  • Partner portal
    A special dealer portal, which allowed the company to automate processes both for the key Tricolor dealer and for hundreds of small resellers, was implemented.
  • Subscriber base migration
    Several thousand active subscribers were migrated from the previous billing. The main feature of the task was that besides subscribers, it was necessary to migrate dealers as well.
  • Business process automation
    Key business processes of the company were developed and automated: new customer connection, contract termination, satellite equipment activation, purchasing additional data packages, etc

Hydra products in use

Billing system
Rating, charging, invoicing, payments
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Hydra OMS
Automation of business processes, embedding widgets for CRM and Helpdesk, order management
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Product catalog
Products, price plans, services, discounts, packages and promotions
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Provisioning and Mediation
Integration with operator equipment Cisco BRAS and satellite hub Gilat
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Results
“
Our managers are constantly generating new ideas for our further cooperation with Hydra. We receive a large amount of requests, mostly related to the specifics of satellite communications — various reports for analytics and optimization, and routine integrations with new systems.
— Ernest Wong, Chief Technical Officer at Eutelsat
  • 1
    The lack of scalability and customization has been solved. Thanks to this, the company has implemented several network expansion projects, which was impossible with the previous billing solution.
  • 2
    Hydra’s open protocols and APIs made it possible to scale up the billing for another project too.
  • 3
    Using OMS Hydra and its capabilities to automate business processes allows to significantly reduce operating costs and speed up the work.
  • 4
    Eutelsat has gained the freedom to design and implement ambitious expansion plans. The company is constantly ordering new custom developments and features from Hydra.
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