iG Brazil Chooses Portal Software

Leading Brazilian ISP bases billing and customer care for its 11 million subscribers on solution from Portal

CUPERTINO, CA (PRWEB) April 3, 2003 - Brazilian Internet service provider iG (www.ig.com.br), one of the countrys largest ISPs with more than 11 million subscribers, has chosen Portal Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: PRSF) as its end-to-end billing and customer care solution. iG will utilize Infranet®, Portals convergent billing product, to charge customers for DSL access and other premium services. After evaluating competitive solutions, iG determined that only Portal could deliver the flexibility it needed to rapidly implement new premium services and innovative new product bundles. Portals ability to scale with future iG business growth was also a key consideration, as iG recently announced an expansion into 52 new cities, giving it presence in 280 Brazilian cities overall. Infranet will help iG drive to meet its aggressive revenue targets while assisting the acceleration of the companys business plan to become the leading premium service provider in their market.

The Brazilian telecommunications market is undergoing major changes to the regulations regarding revenue sharing between Tier 1 carriers and service providers. In addition, the Brazilian market for IP-based content and premium services is expected to grow dramatically as PC penetration continues to rise. Consequently, iGs near-term focus is on attracting new paying customers, both through creative and valuable premium service bundlings. After joint meetings with Accenture and Portal, iG understood that it needed a product-based approach to solving its complex billing issues. This was particularly true given iGs requirements for speed of implementation, time to market, and flexibility in offering variable discounts for different service bundles.

We spent a lot of time trying to make other approaches work-we looked closely at other billing packages and tried in-house development-but determined that Portals product gives us the best value and the fastest time to that value," said Decio Yuiti Sonohara, chief technical officer at iG. Further, we are confident that our Portal solution will grow with our business as we continue to lead the ISP market in Brazil."

The ISP market in South America is growing as more households acquire computers and as deregulation presents more options for content and related services," said Chris M. Grejtak, senior vice president, marketing at Portal Software. The leading service providers, iG as a chief example, are now looking at upgrading and replacing the legacy billing systems they have cobbled together over the past several years so that they can more effectively meet the demands of this emerging opportunity. We see the market as a perfect opportunity for Portals value proposition of speed and flexibility."

About Portal Software, Inc.
Portal Software provides flexible billing solutions to enable organizations to monetize their voice and digital transactions. Portals convergent billing platform enables service providers to charge, bill, and manage a wide range of services via multiple networks, payment models, pricing plans, and value chains. Portals flexible and scalable product-based solutions enable customers to introduce new value-added services quickly, providing maximum business value and lower total cost of ownership. Portals customers include thirty-five of the top fifty wireless carriers as well as organizations such as Vodafone, AOL Time Warner, Deutsche Telekom, TELUS, NTT, China Telecom, Reuters, Telstra, China Mobile, Telenor Mobil, Vivendi, and France Telecom. For more information, please visit www.portal.com.
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Copyright© 2003 Portal Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Infranet and the Portal logo are U.S. registered trademarks, and Portal is a trademark of Portal Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All statements made in this press release are made only as of the date set forth at the beginning of this release. Portal undertakes no obligation to update the information in the event facts or circumstances subsequently change.

Local Media Contacts:    
Corporate: Amanda Klinger, aklinger@portal.com, 408.572.2985
North America: Christine Coleman, ccoleman@horngroup.com, 415.905.4028
Europe: Geoff Devlin, gdevlin@portal.com, +44 (0) 1753 244026
Asia Pacific: Cindy Ho, Asia-Pacific, cindyho@portal.com, +852-2585-2200