Livewire: The Communications, Media and Entertainment Blog

Real time charging and rating remains a challenge for Telco operating companies.  We see the need for software driven solutions to resolve these key challenges in a cost effective way. 

• The explosion in the amount of mobile data traffic. 

Our customers are seeing year on year growth in excess of 100% in the transactions carried on their networks.

• Bill-shock and policy management.  

Legislation changes and customer expectations mean that it's no longer acceptable to catch up with billable transactions at some point in the future.

• Telco 2.0 Business Models. 

Marketing departments must be able to monetize new services and compete with new entrants

We've been doing a lot of work around these areas and I have recently been running an evaluation of a newly developed solution.  The results I've seen are going to be a real eye opener for the industry.

We been able to examine the challenges of managing increasing volumes and complexity, including a rate plan with ten pricing dimensions, checking the linear scalability by tracking CPU utilization and response latency.  We've also tried to recreate real business scenarios, with both retail (large number of subscribers with a small number of transaction each) and wholesale (Small number of customer, high transaction volumes) as well as a single shared balance with large transactions all decrementing it.

We are going to encapsulate our findings and I'll be looking to start sharing on my next blog.

Posted by Ian Williams at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had co-authored an article on this topic that appeared in Wireless Week a few week ago.  I wanted to summarize my perspectives here that I shared on the article.

Four billion mobile connections and counting. The growing ubiquity of mobile phones, their increasing computational capabilities and the increasing penetration of high-speed mobile wireless networks have made wireless connectivity more reliable. Over the years, the Enterprise Mobility market has gone beyond simple Enterprise Personal Information Management (PIM) and e-mail access on the mobile.

To enterprises, the mobile phone represents an opportunity that will parallel or even exceed the transformational impact of the Internet. Mobiles, today, offers opportunities for the Enterprises to reach out to customers and create new experiences. A strategic approach to Enterprise Mobility opens up a world of opportunities for organizations to evolve their existing processes and adopt new ones, strengthening their position in the competitive market. 

To continue reading, click here to go to Wireless Week April 2010 article.

Posted by Sandeep Chandrasekar Seshadri at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Standard COTS billing packages available are widely suitable for retail or whole sale line of business and have limited capability to support complex interconnect billing requirements.

While for small CPS's it might be prudent to use same billing solution for both retail & interconnect billing requirements, for large & global CSP's its better to have separate billing solution
Primarily Interconnect Settlements are mutual agreements between various network carriers' outlying terms and conditions for each operator to use other's network services to route call tariffs.  Any interconnect billing solution should have the capability to support:

• Multiple usage records - voice, data and content services, multimedia, content, VoIP, WLAN, etc
• Accounting and audit functionalities
• Multiple carrier settlements and revenue sharing
• Bulk rating and charging based on distance/destination, time zone rating
• Re-pricing and volume based discounts
• Flexible invoicing and taxation, summary invoices, Intermediate statements
• Accounting and ERP interfacing
• Least cost routing, and call accounting
• Cost, Number and location based charging
• Different network types usage records, network elements and trunk routes
• Complex usage and network elements related reports - CDR reconciliation, carrier revenue settlement, account status, operational reports, tariff related

If CPS' have limited agreements with other carrier operators, same billing solution can be configured in separate instance to meet interconnect billing requirements. Again final solution blue print for billing systems depends on kind of call usage rating requirements, price discounting, settlement agreements and how calls are getting routed.

Posted by Shivakumar Ramachandran at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been browsing through various news sites on Telecom Billing and BSS systems at large. There are good investments being made by the operators to transform their BSS systems, in particular, billing systems. There are also many operators who are trying out new services like provision of broadband over mobile connection - check here. Let us assume that the market leading telecom billing packages would be capable enough to handle all such new and innovative services. It doesn't seem big enough a challenge for that to happen. But have you ever looked into checking the compliance of a telecom billing package to a non-telco industry vertical? It's a lot of fun. Believe me.

 

Let us start with Utility industry. It is imperative that the usage data here comes from various meters installed in customer sites. These records have to be mediated, rated, billed and invoiced to the end consumer. Though all of these are not the completely-out-of-box functionalities offered by telco based products, at a high level, these are not too far away requirements to implement. With some customization we can achieve these functionalities. But, a Utility Company looks forward to the same billing system to handle some of the Customer Care functions, web selfcare requirements, which becomes a bottle neck for a telco billing product. Here is where it falls short.

In Logistics industry, Settlement with intermediaries and suppliers becomes critical along with Contract and Customer Management functions. This again is not fully explored in a telco billing product suite. Also, payment functionality is a little hectic in this vertical with interfaces to financial management and cash payment systems, which generally is limited incase of a telco offering.

Similarly, the product will face multiple challenges in various other industry verticals, which is making the product companies to recreate a variant of the same billing engine for each industry vertical.

Have you seen any direct application of Telecom Billing Package in non-Telco industry? Share your thoughts here.

 

Posted by Prasanth Kumar at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)