Livewire: The Communications, Media and Entertainment Blog: Interconnect Billing: Why is a Separate Billing Solution Required?

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.