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Pactolus Products:
Prepaid & RapidFLEX Sonus partner deployment, Facilities Based Prepaid SP and Wholesaler

The Customer

Gold Line Telemanagement is Canada's largest facilities-based prepaid service providers, serving over 70% of its market through its 100,000 points of sale across North America. Founded in 1994, Gold Line is a world-class IP services retailer and wholesaler recognized for the high quality and affordability of its services, and for its innovative, user-friendly features.

Call out sidebar quote: "Pactolus is the clear VoIP services vendor of choice, and a strategic
partner. Its advanced service extensibility and customizability uniquely met our requirements, and provides a future-proof foundation for new and successive generations of service products and multi-national expansion."

The Challenge

First established as a reseller of long distance services, Gold Line initially targeted specific consumer sectors with economical international dialing and native language features. At the time, Gold Line resold services from large telecom companies, and had little control over call quality. Fundamental issues such as dropped calls, incomplete calls and audibility fluctuations arose, and were in direct conflict with the company's high standards and customer services goals.

Its role as a reseller of TDM-based services also limited its breadth of subscriber services, as did the flexibility limits of its own TDM infrastructure.

Gold Line's management saw that its market opportunities would grow significantly, and decided to grow the company into a premium facilities-based service provider. Its goal was to evolve Gold Line into a "one stop shop” with in-house control over all major aspects of its call quality, service development and delivery. They wanted the ability to define and develop its own services and feature enhancements, integrate advanced billing and administrative functionalities, target new subscriber populations, and grow & manage a global network that leveraged IP points of presence and service interconnects.

Achieving this independence, quality control and expansion potential meant migrating to a more powerful IP softswitch and service architecture, and deploying a comprehensive SIP-based voice service delivery platform and service creation environment.

The decision to become a facilities-based prepaid service provider and global services innovator was consistent with Gold Line's commitment to quality, and was also a shrewd strategy. Prepaid subscribers were increasingly sophisticated and demanding, and their buying patterns reflected their growing awareness and intolerance of poor call quality and service.

Gold Line's decision to invest in IP switching infrastructure and voice service solution was a major one, and came at a time when many competitive services seemed to be reducing their service quality. Gold Line needed its investments to quickly translate into greater capacity, appreciably better baseline call connect/disconnects, and better user features, language supports and management capabilities.

Gold Line's key requirements for its new Service Delivery Platform (SDP) and Service Creation Environment (SCE) were that they be easy to work with, extremely powerful, and provide the flexibility to allow rapid introduction of new service products and features.

The Solution

Gold Line carefully evaluated alternative service application approaches before replacing its TDM-based services platform. As a result, it selected the Pactolus solution both for the rapid time to market and proven scale of SIPware services, and for the advanced feature extensibility and adaptability the object-based RapidFLEX Service Creation Environment enabled.

The migration of its pre-existing services from TDM to Pactolus' SIP-based Service Creation & Delivery Platform enabled Gold Line to control call quality, and quickly introduce important new user features, such as for example a new way to protect the subscriber's identity while simplifying their ability to place calls from any location.

The Pactolus platform enables it to fully serve its rapidly-growing reseller channels, and Gold Line is also aggressively leveraging its SIP connectivity by expanding its worldwide network of POP and interconnects, which now include IP service POPs worldwide.

As a result, its prepaid, affinity and promotional calling card market share are all expanding, driven by innovative services based on Pactolus' award-winning SIPware Calling Card application and RapidFLEX Service Delivery Platform.

Gold Line continues to innovate, and can economically add new services because its full service product portfolio can share all voice service network elements and resources.

The Results

Pactolus has provided the foundation for Gold Line's expansion of its pre-paid, VoBB and conferencing services, and has helped establish the company as a premium quality service provider.

Its direct line of prepaid, affinity and promotional calling cards are all winning new market share, driven by innovative services based on Pactolus' award-winning SIPware Calling Card application and RapidFLEX Service Delivery Platform.

The RapidFLEX platform's flexibility has also fueled new channel growth and revenue streams: its virtual partitioning capabilities support Gold Line's emergence a wholesaler, reselling services to other service providers. Vivian Clark, Gold Line's Chief Technology Officer, notes: "Pactolus gives Gold Line the ability to support new service providers, who in turn create and sell their own services independent of Gold Line.”

Gold Line continues to innovate, and economically adds new services because its full service product portfolio can share all voice service network elements and resources. For example, its GL Phone subscribers – its prepaid VoBB service – now use their individual phone number on any SIP compliant phone or end point device. Unlike other VoBB providers, Gold Line's access isn't limited to North America: GL Phone cost-effectively supports world wide number access and travel.

Gold Line's services are now offered in 20 languages and used in over 80 countries worldwide, and the company has emerged as one of the largest multi-national, multi-language service providers in North America. Their services reach throughout Europe, Asia & Middle East, and cover every major metropolitan city worldwide, supporting an average 100 million minutes of long distance calls each month.

Clark summarizes: "Pactolus is an invaluable partner and has been pivotal in our expansion strategy, through which we've come full circle in our business model. We began a dozen years ago as an agent for larger service providers, and now we are a recognized leader in quality, innovation and reach. "