Get your telecom bill on video

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 June 2011 14:03

Business IT - Technology

It's an entirely new way to get your phone bill: a video that details and explains all your charges for the bill; and its developers claim it will reduce the number of queries to telco call centres from confused customers.

Each video bill is generated in real-time as the customer watches it by 'populating' a video template with real customer data from the telco's billing system.

The technology to do this has been developed by venture capital backed startup SundaySky and its already being used by AT&T, and by T-Mobile Austria in a different way. T-Mobile uses it promotional videos for cellphones that are created 'on' the fly' simply by inputting the model details.

You can watch a real AT&T customer video bill that has been posted on YouTube here, from AT&T customer 'Brad' who describes it as "AT&T's way of making me feel special when I pay my huge bill." A T-Mobile Austria video using the technology to promote the Samsung Galaxy Ace smartphone can be seen here.

SundaySky is one of a number of companies that have been taken under the wing of global OSS/BSS developer Amdocs as part of Amdocs Open Innovation, a series of three programs under which the company "collaborate[s] with promising young startup companies and offer[s] service providers additional innovative products and solutions that support the challenges and demands of the connected world, as well as new and better ways to achieve their business goals."

Amdocs is working with SundaySky under the Amdocs Engage! Program which "nurtures and promotes joint business opportunities between Amdocs, start-up companies and leading service providers'¦[and] helps introduce emerging technologies that extend and complete the Amdocs' offering."

Demonstrations of the SundaySky technology integrated with Amdocs' OSS/BSS products were staged at recent Amdocs intouch customer events in Miami and Singapore, along with technology form a number of other Amdocs Open Innovation partners.

In a video interview at intouch Miami, Aviv Goren, SundaySky's VP of sales says: "We get outstanding results [from video billing]...We ran a survey with customers'¦We are seeing that customers who watch these videos tend to call the call centre ten percent less, and even if the do call they tend to hold the agent by about nine percent less."

Stuart Corner travelled to Amdocs Intouch Singapore as a guest of Amdocs.