TOKYO, Japan/ TORONTO, ON - June 27, 2002 - Sigma Systems, the cable industry's leading provider of service management solutions, announced that @NetHome has selected the SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio to provision its subscribers with high speed Internet services. @NetHome is Japan's largest Cable ISP, with over 300,000 customers. Sigma was selected by @NetHome based on numerous factors including:
- The proven success of Sigma's solution at its customers;
- Sigma's past extensive experience with @Home affiliates worldwide;
- The portfolio's ability to provide flow-through provisioning support for multiple services;
- Its ability to support service management for call centers;
- Sigma's longevity in the marketplace as the pioneer in cable service management technology;
- Its numerous large-scale deployments supporting multiple services;
- The tremendous scalability, ability and power of its portfolio in provisioning broadband solutions enabling the triple play - voice, data and video services.
"As an organization firmly focused on reducing costs, improving provisioning accuracy and ultimately improving customer satisfaction for our MSO customers, we recognize the tremendous importance of service management," said Mr. Sadahiko Hirose, CEO, @NetHome Co. Ltd. "Selecting the SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio, along with Cisco's Broadband Provisioning Registrar, was an obvious choice for us, based on the very specific and comprehensive functionality we require to support our service operator customers. Our shared visions for the future of cable service management, Sigma's deep industry experience, their commitment to excellence, coupled with their ability to deliver on-time, continues to play a key part in our growth strategy."
The SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio now being deployed at @NetHome, captures key subscriber order information as well as activates and provisions customer orders, processes topology information to better manage service qualification and network changes, provides service diagnostics, and integrates with @NetHome's customer care and billing, member services and web-space platforms. This extensive functionality is supported by a large and growing list of proven, off-the-shelf adapters and interfaces, which Sigma frequently updates to ensure they stay current with changes in these various third party network components.
"Our solution brings numerous complex systems together seamlessly for @NetHome," said Stephen Nicolle, CEO and President, Sigma Systems. "Thanks to @NetHome's strong management team, the company has succeeded in expanding their subscriber base to more than 300,000 high-speed Internet subscribers in just over two years. Looking ahead, the scalability and power of our offering will support @NetHome as they further continue to broaden their range of advanced services to support their growing subscriber base."
In delivering its solution to @NetHome, Sigma is teaming with partner Cisco Systems, to deploy Cisco Broadband Provisioning Registrar (BPR). Cisco BPR is a distributed, carrier-class, subscriber-device-provisioning application allowing for automated flow-through provisioning of subscriber services in a fully redundant environment. Cisco BPR automatically recognizes devices, assigns class of service, dynamically creates and generates device configuration files, and activates subscribers. Together the SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio and Cisco BPR provide the end-to-end automated activation, configuration, and service management solutions required by @NetHome.
"Our high performance Broadband Provisioning Registrar product, integrated with the SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio, will greatly benefit @NetHome by giving them a scalable solution capable of supporting their growing customer base with voice, data and video services," said Anson Chen, Vice President/General Manager, Intelligent Network Services and Management Business Unit, Cisco Systems. "This integrated offering provides the marketplace with a complete flow-through provisioning solution with industry leading performance and reliability."
Sigma's products are designed to support multiple services such as voice, interactive TV and high-speed data, critical to @NetHome's subscriber growth. The Sigma solution at @NetHome will interface with its JCIS/CBI Customer Relationship Management system, Cisco's BPR to provision DOCSIS-compliant cable modems, Terayon and COM21's proprietary modems, OpenWave's InterMailTM e-mail platform, Remedy's Action RequestTM trouble-ticketing system, and other OSS and network infrastructure vendors' platforms, providing end-to-end flow-through provisioning of high-speed Internet services over hybrid fiber coax-based cable networks.
In a separate announcement made yesterday, Sigma appointed industry veteran Nicholas Hippolyte as the company's Vice-President, Market Development, for the Asia-Pacific region.
About Sigma Systems
Sigma Systems is the global leader in developing and deploying service management solutions for cable system operators. Sigma's OSS (Operations Support System) products enable service providers to automate service management, deliver service with reliability and scalability, improve operating margins, increase customer retention, and enable subscriber growth.The award-winning SigmaTM Service Management Portfolio is a rapidly-deployed solution suite for service provisioning and diagnostics of cable broadband services, including high-speed residential and commercial Internet, digital TV, interactive TV, video on demand and cable telephony services. Sigma's products have been deployed at the largest cable operators in the US including AT&T Broadband, Comcast, and Cox. Internationally, Sigma's software serves such major MSOs and ISPs as @Home Benelux (Belgium and the Netherlands), @NetHome (Japan), Cogeco (Canada), Essent Kabelcom (the Netherlands), Rogers (Canada) and Shaw (Canada).
Sigma's clients serve a combined total of over 35 million subscribers globally. Established in 1990, Sigma is headquartered in Toronto, with its European base in London and sales offices in 9 other cities worldwide. Strategic investors in Sigma include: Cisco Systems, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Redwood Ventures. Additional information about Sigma Systems can be found at www.sigma-systems.com.