WeDo Signs New Deal with NOS

WeDo Technologies, the market leader in the supply of telecoms business assurance software, has announced a new contract with NOS, the Portuguese multiplay provider. No price was disclosed. The press release can be found here.

Few details are provided in the press release, though this is partly due to the complicated back story to this deal. NOS was created by a 2013 merger between Optimus, a mobile CSP, and ZON Multimédia, a cable operator. Optimus already used WeDo software. However, ZON’s revenue assurance system was supplied by Subex, and its FMS was from cVidya. The new contract effectively sees two of WeDo’s rivals being displaced from the cable operations of NOS.

WeDo tends to benefit from Portuguese corporations keeping business within their family of interests, and this deal is no exception. Optimus was a subsidiary of Sonaecom, which continues to hold a significant stake in NOS. WeDo is also owned by the Sonae Group.

Ricardo Moreira of NOS said the following about the deal:

We needed a dynamic solution to help accelerate convergence across the full addressable market to create synergy between systems, while encouraging innovation, productivity and operational efficiency. Having had a successful relationship with WeDo since 2005 on the mobile side of our business, we were confident that they were the right partner for the wider company.

However, a more telling insight into WeDo’s influence can be found in Ricardo Moreira’s job title: Enterprise Business Assurance Manager. ‘Enterprise Business Assurance’ is a phrase formulated by WeDo to describe the umbrella of risk and assurance solutions they offer. This is the first time I have seen the phrase incorporated into the job title of a telco employee. It would doubtless suit WeDo if other telcos follow this precedent by consolidating revenue assurance, fraud management, and other operational risk management activities into a single business assurance department that covers the whole enterprise.

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalns
Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), a global association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He is a qualified chartered accountant, with degrees in information systems, and in mathematics and philosophy.