GigaMedia, Taiwan's Largest Provider of Cable-Based Internet Services, Implements Portal Software; Infranet billing solution supports usage-based pricing for cable broadband provider

Business Wire, March 27, 2000

Business Editors

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2000

Portal Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRSF), a leading provider of business infrastructure software for Internet and next-generation communications services, announced today that GigaMedia Limited, Taiwan's largest provider of cable-based, broadband Internet access services, has licensed Portal's customer management and billing solution, Infranet(R).

Infranet will provide the company with a robust platform to manage, rate and bill customers in real time. It will also enable both GigaMedia and its content providers to employ usage-based pricing structures.

In a country where more than three-quarters of the population has cable TV, GigaMedia provides exclusive cable access to approximately 3.4 million households - some 60 per cent of all households in Taiwan. At speeds up to 100 times faster than typical dial-up connections, GigaMedia's subscribers can access rich, Chinese-language multimedia content, search engines customized for Taiwanese users, free electronic mail, message boards and chat rooms.

"By providing customer management and billing, we make it easier for traditional narrowband content providers to offer their content via broadband," says Michel Chu, assistant vice president and chief technology officer at GigaMedia. "Portal's Infranet enables us to provide real-time access to content -- based on account privileges, offer multi-tier billing and manage both free and fee-based services. We believe our information system, of which Portal's Infranet is a key component, is a major factor in our ability to remain competitive and flexible in an evolving market."

With the next-generation rating engine in Infranet, GigaMedia is able to respond quickly to changing consumer preferences by offering multiple business models, including prepaid accounts, cross service real-time volume discounts, credit and debit of non-monetary resources, and more.

"Thanks to broadband Internet access, IP telephony over cable, and other exciting advances, the allure of cable - and the potential revenue per subscriber - has grown dramatically," said Robert Lau, vice president of Portal Software (Asia Pacific) Ltd. "Cable companies, are racing to capture market share in this fiercely competitive market. Having an infrastructure that is flexible to enable cable providers to quickly respond to market needs is a key differentiator and a ultimately a key success factor for cable companies."

Infranet is currently running across four Compaq Proliant 3000 servers in a redundant configuration. This architecture will enable GigaMedia to scale any portion of the billing system while the system remains fully operational, simply by adding more hardware when needed. The company can also add additional database instances and split the account database across multiple databases for further scalability and performance.

As part of the implementation GigiMedia is integrating Infranet with Microsoft's Commercial Internet System (MCIS), a provisioning and content management platform. The integration between Infranet and MCIS/Site server enables cable service operators to purchase an off-the-shelf, complete Internet solution to deploy basic and value-added-services, as well as manage and bill customers.

About GigaMedia

GigaMedia (NASDAQ:GIGM) is a leading provider of broadband Internet access services and content through its cable-based television network infrastructure in Taiwan. The company has access to more than 3.4 million households and 465,000 small- and medium-sized businesses. In addition to broadband access services, the Company also offers interactive multimedia content through its Web destination www.giga.net.tw. The site offers six interactive channels of Chinese-language content: music, entertainment, news, games, finance, freeware and TV programming sites.

About Portal Software

Portal Software, Inc., is building business infrastructure for the Internet. Based in Cupertino, Calif., Portal is the leading provider of customer management and billing software for Internet and emerging, next-generation communications services. The company's comprehensive real-time solution enables service providers to manage customers, support services and collect money. Portal's customers include US West, Qwest Communications, Covad, Inktomi, Juno Online, T-Online, France Telecom and Demon Interactive.