For all the state-of-the-art technology in use within service provider networks, its surprising how unsophisticated some back office platforms and processes at these same companies sometimes are – or were, until fairly recently.

The process to place orders and handle settlements among different telecom service providers traditionally has been a manual one, involving faxed forms or e-mail communications, says Vic Bozzo, senior vice president of sales at Telarix (News - Alert) Inc. That, he says, is like a bank executing a wire transfer by having a guy write a check and run down the street to deliver it.

“The telecom industry needs to transform into one that is efficient and electronic,” says Bozzo.

To allow for more efficient service provider interactions, Telarix offers iXLink, which enables carriers; resellers and emerging market providers to automate their wholesale interconnect purchase processes. 

Telarix customers include such major service providers as KDDI, Sprint, Telecom Italia (News - Alert), Telus and Verizon. Telarix has more than 3,000 members, which exchange more than 40,000 documents monthly via iXlink.

Those documents include price list receipt, price list distribution, bill receipt and bill distribution services. Carrier customers also can select from premium features such as dial code analysis and discrepancy management, line-by-line invoice reconciliation and audit and listed least cost routing report.  Because carrier customers of Telarix have multiple POPs in which they buy and sell, iXLink was designed to allow different parts of the carrier organizations to leverage the system, while enabling the carrier to manage it all from a global perspective.

Telarix got its start providing tier 1 carriers with software for least-cost routing management. It later introduced a billing solution for this same customer set. Then, about four years ago, customers asked Telarix to deliver a solution to help them more efficiently upload data to and manage these systems, so it introduced the iXLink product. Once customers started using it, Telarix realized they were leveraging it to interact with each other. In February 2013 alone, iXLink was used by 3,000 carriers to handle 50,000 rate sheets.

Today, about 80 percent of the Telarix business has to do with voice traffic. But the company says the platform has big potential for other applications such as SMS and video.