Deal leaves Newcall and Rocom smiling

By ADAM GIFFORD

Newcall Group has taken a 3.3 per cent stake in Rocom Communications in payment for a copy of its billing system, which Rocom intends to use for billing packet data.

The deal has both parties smiling: Rocom, because it gets a powerful billing engine for a fraction of the price it expected to pay, and Newcall, because it gets an outside customer for a part of its business it wants to develop.

The system is based on the PCMS billing engine, developed for the telecommunications industry by French company Idea System.

Newcall hired Auckland software house Scimitar to develop its customer relationship software as a front end, and added other features to meet the needs of the New Zealand market.

When Newcall closed its telecommunications business here, managing director Jim Bracknell said it could still make money from the billing system, as well as its stake in power company Energy Online.

Rocom executive director Richard Guy said the Newcall system would allow Rocom to bill for packets of data, rather than just units of time as with conventional telecommunications billing systems.

Rocom handles both the Iridium satellite service, which resumed this year and now includes data, and Inmarsat, which has a new ISDN portable global area network.

Mr Guy said Rocom would be able to offer a billing service to other companies across a range of industries.

Apart from Energy Online, the only other organisation using the system is Newcall in Singapore, which bought a licence for $3 million based on a PriceWaterhouseCoopers evaluation.

With Rocom acquiring its exclusive New Zealand licence for 400,000 50c shares, Mr Guy said that amounted to a $2.8 million saving for Newcall shareholders.

Mr Bracknell said it was not a straight comparison - the Singapore sale also included a general ledger and other financial modules.

But Rocom's system would allow it to do telecommunications billing, internet sales, electronic procurement, order management, data warehousing and customer and call centre management.

"We're looking at a profitable Energy Online in New Zealand - this year that business will generate more revenue than we ever did in telecommunications here."

Rocom