Although LHS Communications Systems Inc. was formed only a year ago, the company is not new.
The U.S. operation, which provides billing and customer care systems to wireless carriers, is an offspring of LH Specifications, started in Germany six years ago by former IBM executives Hartmut Lademacher, Jachim Hertel and Rainer Zimmerman. LHS Communications Systems and LHS Group Holdings recently set up headquarters in Atlanta.
The company launched operations in the United States with a contract to provide its Business Support and Control System to Pacific Bell Mobile Services for its personal communications services network. LHS has signed contracts with American Portable Telecommunications and PowerTel PCS, as well.
Amidst IBM’s business reorganization in 1990, the computer giant abandoned its telecom pursuit, explained Will Bobb, president of the LHS Communications Systems. At the same time, Germany’s telecommunications market was opening.
LHS founders Lademacher and Hertel understood Global System for Mobile communications technology from the computer industry, and believed they could apply that knowledge to wireless communications and build a better billing system. Instead of recoding current analog specifications, the partners’ vision was to start from scratch using GSM. “The green field was open,” Bobb commented.
And they had a customer, Mannesmann AG. Today, BSCS is used by more than 50 telecommunications companies in more than 20 countries.
BSCS operates on a client/server software platform. It is an event-based system, but can handle non-event driven services as well, said LHS. “We don’t try to be all things to all people,” commented Bobb.
Based on an open architecture, BSCS can minimize a carrier’s upfront hardware costs, said LHS. Service providers only need to buy the hardware their network requires. Using Windows software, carriers’ customer service agents navigate through BSCS, said LHS. Customer service agents can make billing changes in real time and produce bills on-demand, in almost any language.
LHS recently introduced Internet-based BSCS services to speed mobile phone activations. Internet point-of-sale service allows carriers, retailers or home browsers to activate mobile service via the carrier’s home page. LHS’ other Internet service, Telebilling, allows cellular customers to review their billing information and conduct call simulations to check the tariff structures in different rate plans. Telebilling offers a number of other features, as well. Users can check account balances, manage call forwarding, call barring, short message service, SIM card application service and bill formatting and accounting, said LHS.
BSCS also supports Code Division Multiple Access, Advanced Mobile Phone Service and the Nordic Mobile Telephone standards, and can run for paging and wireline carriers, as well.
