S3's invention discovers errors in communications network billing systems

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, July 12, 2004

The lost and mis-allocated calls of complex communications network billing systems can now be accounted for with a unique product created by S3 Matching Technologies. Called TeraMatch by its inventors, the patent-pending technology has a previously unavailable capability to independently match huge sets of data and identify discrepancies. TeraMatch, which has applications across a number of industries, has been initially launched in the Telecommunications and Investment Services industries.

"We've discovered that both the telecoms and their customers are losing money as a result of complex billing systems that are just too big and expensive to be easily rebuilt," said Jack Holt, CEO of Austin, Texas-based S3 Matching Technologies. "We've developed a product that finds these mistakes and corrects them in a way that both recovers lost revenue for the carrier and reduces cost for the customer."

According to Holt, TeraMatch has proved that anywhere from 2-10 percent of calls in enterprise class networks are either lost or incorrectly billed. The discrepancies are the result of constantly expanding networks and billing systems where call data can be compromised, resulting in calls that can be allocated to the wrong customer or calls with excessive duration.

"TeraMatch fixes this problem by finding these mis-allocated calls," said S3's CTO Tim Pletcher. "Our technology can do something that has never been done before and this is to match billions of lines of data down to the single call level and correct mistakes."

Using a live system that finds and fixes errors within the monthly billing cycle, TeraMatch takes the billing data from the carriers and matches it against the customer's call data. The ASP system finds both over-billing and under-billing errors and trues-up the variances.

"We are confident TeraMatch will bring a new level of credibility and trust to the telecom industry," said Holt. "It acts to provide revenue assurance as well as insuring customers that they are paying only for what they used."