A developer of subscriber-centric policy management software for fixed, mobile and converged networks, Bridgewater Systems today officially opened a regional office in Australia.

As a software provider for IP-based services, the company will be targetting wireless and broadband communications service providers.

The company's A/NZ managing director, David Brooks, will lead the local sales and engineering teams which is already supporting customers including Telstra and Telecom New Zealand.

Brooks said Bridgewater's solutions are technology agnostic allowing service providers to leverage investments across multiple networks including both wireless and wireline infrastructures.

"This allows converged operators, offering services over a number of access networks, to derive efficiencies from a single platform approach that helps accelerate time-to-market and reduce operational costs such as customer care and management," he said.

"Because our technology provides an intelligent policy decision point anchored around subscriber entitlements, service providers can take advantage of a unified view of subscribers to easily bundle services to meet the needs of a wide range of subscriber segments.

"This subscriber-centric approach to policy management enables operators to take advantage of third-party applications and content while providing application vendors access to subscriber profiling, subscription, presence and location information."

Brooks said service providers can increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and enrich the subscriber experience by extending policy controls over how and under which circumstances subscriber information can be made available to applications.

"As service providers look to better control and monetize subscriber access to networks and applications, subscriber-centric policy management helps improve customer retention by delivering a consistent service experience over the best network and most appropriate for the device," he said.

Global customers include Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Virgin Mobile.