This also includes hardware upgrade to maintain system performance and for more storage as well. We already explained that Event is a single occurrence of product/service usage. A new California law is sparking backlash --- with uncertain benefits for clean energy. Billing is the aggregation of all non-recurring, periodic, and chargeable events on an account-by-account basis. MVNE stands for Mobile Virtual Network Enabler, which is a company that provides services to mobile virtual network operators such as billing, network element provisioning, administration, operations, support of base station subsystems and operations support systems, and provision of back end network elements, to enable provision of mobile network services like cellular phone connectivity. Affordable solution to train a team and make them project ready. The CDR is then stored until it can be rated. Most commonly used support levels are as follows . To apply any applicable rating time discounts. In addition, each product family can have more than one parent product if required. Some examples of credit classes are as follows . CDRs that are only billable for Interconnect providers. Any interconnection point at which the parties agree to connect their respective Networks is called "Interconnection Point". As seen, the greater the spend, the more the discount. If payment method is set automatic using either credit card or debit card, payment requests are generated automatically after every invoice or on a given date and these requests are sent to the payment gateways (or banks) for payment authorization. Service Payments This is the most important factor, which differentiates between two customer bases. This is done for accounting purpose, otherwise it is a loss for the operator. Here, a fixed percent of commission will go to the MVNE. An extra bill that contains charges due to events processed for the account since the last bill. ", Retail billing deals directly with the end customer and comes with lots of challenges to meet the end customer expectations and regulatory obligations. To calculate the cost/price of the event as per the rating tariff (also referred as rate plan). Convergent charging and billing (also known as convergent charging, converged charging and convergent billing), is a solution in the telecommunications industry that enables common management of all users and all services for operators. One is the ability to offer mobile service packages that include both pre- and post-paid services. The customer may have to fill up an application form providing personal details. Hope you have some idea on how to control credit given to the different classes of customers. 3. These interactions can be recorded in different formats like Notes, voice recordings, etc. Includes all periodic charges, events, and adjustments. An error in the rate plan used resulted in incorrectly priced events. In the early stages of the collections process, the soft collection action will typically be to send a number of dunning notices, which are simple reminder letters and requests for the payment. These reports provide information to identify the areas of network congestion so that corrective measures (rerouting or adding more resources) can be accomplished to overcome these problems. For over a decade, the Commission has combatted arbitrage of its access charge regime, which ultimately raises the rates consumers pay for telecommunications service. Convergent charging and billing (also known as convergent charging, converged charging and convergent billing), is a solution in the telecommunications industry that enables common management of all users and all services for operators. Support and maintenance is an integral and the most important part of a telecom operation. Performance Reporting A satisfactory system will provide performance reporting, ensure quality-of-service (QoS) reporting, create management reports, and generate regulatory reports. It is also referred as local billing. The 5G billing micro-services deployed in containers (e.g. It deals with the "age of account receivables"; for example, invoices that are 0-30 days overdue, 30-60 days overdue, etc. The California Assembly on Thursday passed legislation ( A.B. Inter-carrier settlements It involve sharing of revenue between carriers that provide services to each other's customers. Customers on 5G Home Internet and LTE Home Internet plans did not see a monthly increase. A repetition of all or part of an event file being passed to the Rating Engine. If all the attempts to collect the dues fail, then the service provider may write-off the account and marks the due amount as bad debt or may hand over (sell off) the account to a collection agency. A billing system should be composed of a series of independent applications that, when run together, are referred to as the billing system. Once your marketing department finalized all the products, services, packages and associated prices, they are configured in the billing system. For example, real time charging system is not flexible to maintain a complex business customers' hierarchy, where as a post-paid billing system can handle a customer hierarchy up to N level. Typically, there are following types of customers in today's telecom market . Product Suspension Periodic Charges There could be a requirement to charge a customer periodically even if a customer is suspended because of some reason. This is rating time control, which is done by the Rating Processes. Adjustments should not affect the balance of an account until they are approved. In this way, each MVNO and the network operator could focus on their own niche markets and form customized detailed services that would expand their customer reach and brand. Most of the time, this is the default mode for the Billing Engine. Billing and Charging Evolution. The medium of transmission includes Wire (Copper), Fiber Optics, Ether (wireless), Radio towers, Microwave, Satellite, etc. Nokia Siemens Networks Press Release 2009, http://www.comptel.com/content/PDF/OBA052906.pdf?from=4487384376887653, "Convergent online charging - the value of a unified view", http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson/corpinfo/publications/review/2009_01/files/Charging.pdf, http://www.lightreading.com/mobile/document.asp?doc_id=125681, http://www.vanillaplus.com/downloads/expert-opinions4.pdf, http://www.vanillaplus.com/im_files/pages/VPFeb09_13-15_lr.pdf, http://call-center-software.tmcnet.com/topics/call-center-software/articles/83051-redknees-turnkey-converged-billing-platform-tcb-supports-emea.htm, "Convergent Charging Software - IMS Services & Real-Time Charging Tool - Openet", http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-siemens-networks-bridges-the-gap-between-prepaid-and-pos, Gartner Dataquest Note G00156611, 28 April 2008, http://www.fts-soft.com/category/leap-bccf, http://www.aradial.com/convergent-billing-software.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Convergent_charging&oldid=1106265761, This page was last edited on 23 August 2022, at 21:59. These revenue wastages are caused by customers not being charged in real-time and the extra time to prepare different invoices. Nokia Converged Charging (NCC) is a cloud native charging solution that provides real-time rating and charging capabilities, enabling new monetization opportunities for communication service providers (CSPs) and enterprises. Most of the customers make their payment before the due date. In the 2011 USF/ICC Transformation Order, the Commission adopted rules identifying local exchange carriers (LECs) engaged in access stimulation and requiring that such LECs lower . 1. TAGNAME and tag value are separated by a tag separator (tagsep) of a space. Billing Systems are the backbone of any telecom operator. This is the first system from where a customer order is captured and customer is created into the system. ECE is highly scalable because it leverages Oracle Coherence, an in . Starting from the next chapter, we would try to cover complete process starting from defining products and services, associating plan and tariffs with those products, acquiring customers (selling products to the end customers), capturing usage generated by those customers, and finally, rating and billing that usage to send a final bill to those customers. The Visited Public Mobile Network is the network used by a mobile subscriber while roaming. Roaming is the ability for a customer of mobile communications to automatically make and receive telephone calls, send and receive data, or access other services while travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a network of another operator. Actual service provider charges the end customer for all the roaming services provided based on their predefined service charges. Real-time rating is the process of taking events as they occur and rating them immediately, with as little delay as possible between event generation and costing. The 3GPP 5G Core architecture defines a completely Telecom BSS, using a new service-based architecture (SBA). Retail billing deals with the end customer and billing an individual customer, whereas wholesale billing deals with billing to the following entities depending on situation and nature of business . Payment reports provide information on the customer's account payments during a period of time. Production (live) billing mode This mode is used to produce normal production bills. Post-pay Billing This is the conventional billing, which is coming for many years. Management reports provide information on customers, their products & services usage, call patterns, customer feedback, etc. This system maintains all the network identifiers like phone numbers, MSISDN, IP addresses, e-mail addresses, etc., and technically it is called Network Inventory System. On April 18, 2023, the FDA amended the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 bivalent vaccines to simplify the vaccination schedule for most people. Sending voice, data, picture, fax, etc., from one point to another using electronic media is termed as telecommunication and in short 'telecom'. Telecom Billing is a process of collecting usage, aggregating it, applying required usage and rental charges, and finally generating invoices for the customers. This issue could be related to signals, call drop, voice or data download quality, wrong bill, some dispute, service activation, or termination, etc. A Billing System allows to create different types of adjustments, which can be used in different situations and each adjustment flows through different stages of approval. Copyright TUTORIALS POINT (INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED. Collections schedules define collections actions, which should be carried out and the times at which they should be carried out when a customer does not pay. The . This helps in generating different reports based on the codes associated with the revenue. DOC1 is very famous Bill Formatter tool available from PitneyBowes Company, which helps in bill formatting into PDF or Post Script files. Providing advice of charge (AOC) This gives information about the actual cost of the call either prior to or after the event. Discounts can be calculated either during the rating process or during the billing process . To store the rated event in the database for a billing purpose or send it to the external system for billing. The files are then EXPORTED (on a regular basis, generally at least one file per day) to the home operator, who will IMPORT them and then use the information to invoice the subscriber. The minimum receivables amount below which the action will not take place. Most commonly used agreements are listed below . Keep in mind: how you place your device on the mat can affect how long it takes to charge. Now, we have customers in our billing system along with products and services. billing mode This mode if used to produce formatted test bills whilst leaving the database unchanged. MVNO can brand their services and sell them in the market and MVNE will help in providing those services to the end customer. Operators can have different types of agreements to exchange their traffic. Interconnect Billing: The network operator is usually financially responsible for services provided to its customers by other networks regardless of whether or not the customer pays for the service. For example, if a customer's income is $10,000/month, then operator can provide him their services very easily up to $1000 - $2000 but for the same operator it would be difficult to provide him a service, which would cost almost $10,000/month because in such a situation, it would be difficult for the customer to make monthly payment. Enter the GSMA BCE standard, which is a more flexible model capable of efficiently supporting the large amounts of billing and charging activities that IoT introduced into the mobile ecosystem. Any application where events must be rated and applied quickly to a customer's account is a suitable candidate for real-time rating. Following is the diagram showing the above standard billing process , Steps involved in prepaid billing in brief are as follows . Finally, the charge is added to the customer's account balance. For more information on GSM, MSC, SMS, SMSC, GGSN, MMS, MMSC, please refer to our GSM tutorials. And even in an ideal setup, 20% of the power . When a customer is added into the Billing System, system assigns the customer a predefined Bill Cycle. For consumers, effective December 1, 2022, the monthly Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge for data-only plans increased from $0.06 to $1.40 per line. Billing System interface with this system is used to post all the financial transactions like invoices, payments, and adjustments. Article by Robert Trnkvist and Ralph Schubert. The format of the data at this stage is the same, regardless of how the data is to be processed. However, there may be some customers, who do not pay their bills and there may be an unacceptable delay in paying the bill and hence the service providers must take some action needed to remedy the situation and collect the outstanding balance due (called account receivable, abbreviated as A/R). In the next chapter, we will see how to sell these products to the end-users and create their records in the system. Most of the time, what you pay for electricity or water or gas depends on how much you use. An operator may define different tariffs, which can be offered to different people having different credit classes. As a GSMA WAS #17 delegate you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in four days of thought leadership, inspiring keynotes, Blockchain Interoperability and its relevance. Fully configurable within hours to support new & innovative plans and services. There may be two possible ways to charge an end customer . Here, customers buy products and services and use them throughout the month, and by end of the month, invoices are generated by the service provider and sent those invoices to the customers to make their due payment. Level 2 If a customer care specialist is not able to resolve a problem, then issue is escalated to second level support, which is a group of technical specialists. Operator can define credit limit based on their comfort. Rating Engine receives the events in the form of data records called as Call Detail Records (CDRs) or Usage Detail Records (UDRs), which describe the use of a product/service. An MVNO will buy services in bulk from a well-established operator and change the brand name as per their convenience and market those products and services as an operator. It can summarize all the bills produced by all accounts associated with the respective customer. Huaweis Convergent Charging Gateway, released in 2019, complies with the R15 specifications and is responsible for producing 5G service call detail records. Invoicing It is important that the system performs billing inquiry, generates bills, processes deposits, performs account administration, maintains tax and fee information, and processes financial information. There are several situations in which it may be necessary to rerate events. This is the process of the reconciliation of invoices coming from an interconnect partner which relate to outgoing CDRs. BCE Documents This system works like a general ledger for the finance department and gives complete revenue information at any point in time it is required. Accelerating time-to-market for new service launches. Enabling operator success, cultivating new business, and facilitating user migration to 5G: Some of the good billing systems are listed below , The following diagram shows the typical architecture of a Billing System . These involve testing the total being billed to ensure that the following conditions are met . Operator A's customer makes national call to Operator B's customer. Below are some reasons why: Settlement can be done on monthly or bi-weekly basis using manual or automated process. The next chapter will cover how we can rate this captured usage so that due revenue can be collected from the end-user. Implement changes without vendor intervention. Payment processing It involves posting of the customer's payments into his/her account. Auditing & Security A billing system should perform data audits and integrity checks. Includes any post-termination events and adjustments, but no periodic charges. Importantly these systems can not be made highly available because of their base architecture. [14] As mentioned above, a CDR keeps usage details along with various other useful information. Chart 4: Improved development and delivery. Installation and Maintenance The system should also provide workforce scheduling and manage activities performed at the customer premises. These systems are not flexible enough to handle various functionalities required for post-paid customers for example: complex customer hierarchies, CDR re-rating, volume discounts, flexible reporting, roaming charging, interconnect charging, etc. Various network elements generate CDRs in ASN.1 format and some network elements have their own proprietary format of CDRs. One of the core infrastructure elements necessary for becoming a successful 4G/LTE or 5G provider is a comprehensive billing and online charging system (OCS) for flexible quota management and real-time billing of multiple services: Data over LTE - content-based billing, data bundle control Voice over LTE (VoLTE) - voice calls and SMSs [2][4][8], Challenges to the introduction of convergent charging & billing include migration from existing billing systems for an incumbent telecoms operator. TAP evolved from TAP1 through TAP2 and TAP2+ to TAP3. Take for example a cell phone plana product that charges you at the end of the month for the usage you consume. [7] Swedish telecoms supplier Ericsson has stated that convergent charging & billing can increase marketing flexibility for operators [9] and create revenue growth. Huawei CBS also can use various billing criteria of cloud computing, such as CPUs and memory, to charge OTTs usage on the edge computing server. For example, for a particular product base prices in the catalogue are defined $30 per month but customer is not ready to pay $30 per month, and based on some bargaining, he is ready to pay $25 per month. The term is used as opposed to Home Public Mobile Network (HPMN). If a customer is assigned to run a bill on 1st of the month, this would be called customer's nominal bill date. The CDR for interconnecting calls keep the call routing information as a group of valid values to identify the carrier and the country details. So far, it has been a dream of all the big telecom operators to achieve true convergence. Another important parameter contributing in convergent billing is a single product and price catalogue for pre-paid as well as post-paid customers. These reports help to take appropriate steps to reduce customer churn to introduce new services. When the invoice is run, other nonusage charges, such as discounts or monthly fees, can be applied to the bill or sometime called invoice. It also lowers the risk of tripping when guests or family choose a busy spot to plug in their mobile devices to charge. Billing and collection When and how to collect traffic data, when and how to exchange bills, and when and how to make payment should be specified. Keeping it simple, Products are the items that customers can either buy outright or lease. Huaweis CBS allows OTTs to use open APIs to sign up new users, for example, to cloud gaming services deployed on the edge by a gaming vendor. These charges are defined keeping other competitors and regulations in mind. Leave the air . As per this agreement, another service provider provides all the available services to the roaming customer of first service provider. We already have covered Billing Processes in the previous chapter. If issue is escalated to them, then they analyze the problem and try to find out the root cause of the problem. Whether usage data includes message transactions including calls, bandwidth, per-use, etc., it is imported into a unified data store. A cloud-based telecom charging system architecture can be the solution to the extremely convoluted telecom billing operations of today. [6][7] This real-time capability can be used to deliver promotions and notifications to service users to stimulate usage. Resubmit the events for rating by the Rating Engine. A product can have its monthly rental, which we call periodic charges also. System should support payment collection and applying them on different invoices. The Mediation System processes all the CDRs and converts them into a format compatible to the downstream system, which is usually a Billing System. GSM RAP Standard TD.32 GSM Returned Accounts Procedure (RAP) defines the format for returning information on errors found within transferred TAP files/events and thereby rejecting financial liability for those files/events. Real-time rating can be contrasted with file-based rating, where event details are stored in a file buffer for hours, days, or weeks before the whole file is finally rated. A data collector in the network switch captures the usage in the form of Call Detail Record (CDR)/Usage Detail Record (UDR). Two adjacent, non-competing telephone networks interconnect so that subscribers on one network can call those on the other. Billing systems are high end, reliable, and expensive softwares, which provide various functionalities. A pre-itemization discount cannot incorporate product charges, only event charges. The OMOF module is responsible to track order starting from its creation till its completion. [1] [2] A good billing system provides an option to override base prices at the time they are given to the customer. Let insights guide continuous improvement toward data-driven operations. The above raw UDRs from network elements and also from other service providers are received by the billing system and the billing system converts these into a format understandable by the system. The accurate recording of all required information in a UDR depends on the logic of the switch vendor plus the switch specific table entries. Simply put, an operator uses its products to provide voice services to its customers. Once the invoices are sent to the customers, the customers start making payments of their bills. The system is highly customizable and can fit pretty much any industry. The Mediation System applies various rules on CDRs to process them; for example, mediation system marks the international calls based on the dialed number (B-Number), same way mediation system marks the on-net calls based on A-Number and B-Number. Prices and adjustments This includes the initial level of interconnection charges, a definition of the currency in which interconnection charges are to be paid and how prices will adjust over the term of the agreement to account for exchange rate changes and inflation. These are only applicable to the portion of the set of events or money spent that falls between the assigned discount thresholds. Fixed Pre-Paid Customers These are the customers, who use Fixed line, i.e., landline services by paying their charges in advance. For example, a pay TV product may have an attribute recording its set-top box number. Based on such type of parameters, different priorities are defined and assigned to different issues or operational tasks. Roaming can be either national roaming or international roaming. Find out if you're eligible for Carrier Billing and where you can use it. Other billing time discounts leave the price of the event unmodified. Apart from the above functionalities, a good billing system should be . A duplicate event is defined as any unbilled event that relates to another unbilled event in all of the following ways , Any other criteria can be defined in the billing system to identify duplicate events. A credit class also defines which collections schedule is to be applied to the customer, should its owner fail to make the (undisputed) payments that are due. These customers pay their bills on monthly or bi-monthly basis. With a design that fundamentally emphasizes convenience and usability, wireless charging stations can help reduce clutter in your home or office. I would try to cover most of the concepts later in this tutorial, but first, let us have a broad view of the widely used billing types . An interface is a bound between the billing system and any other external system to receive the payment. After a number of dunning notices have been sent at various stages, other actions are typically scheduled. If prices are non-proratable, billing system would charge the customer for the whole, month which would not be fair with the customer. Whether or not the action is mandatory. To specify how often the highest usage is determined for discounts with highest usage filters attached. Packages allow a product to be offered to a customer at a reduced price if it is taken as part of a package. Charging & Billing For pre-paid customer, it is required to charge the customer in real time for all the usage whereas post-paid customers can be charged at the end of the month. Here is a list of most important features but not limited to the following . Further steps can be added if the discount is required to become more or less favorable with greater volumes. Broadly speaking, there are two type of tariffs, also called rate or price plans, depending terminology used in different billing system. For example, PSTN, WiMax phone users. Service Offerings Post-paid billing systems provide more flexibilities in comparison of real time charging systems. A secure system is always desirable for an operator. Billing systems provide lots of flexibility to define various such rules to charge voice, data, SMS, or MMS usage generated by the customer. There are two types of accounting methods . Consider a situation, when a customer takes phone connection in the middle of the month and his invoice needs to be generated on the first day of every month. So far, we have almost gone through the complete life cycle of a telecom customer. Once all the products, services, packages and their events are configured in the billing system, next step is to define their rental and usage prices, which we will cover in next chapter. Discount applications This involves defining various discount schemes in order to reduce customer churn and attract and increase customer base. The system accepts these as inputs and verifies that the user is valid and has access to the system. When running the Billing Engine in test mode, commits are not made to the database. Most commonly, a trunk ID represents a unique interconnect partner in the interconnect Billing System. The Mediation System collects CDRs from different network elements in different formats. Sales and Marketing A satisfactory billing system should answer customer's query, handle commissions, provide sales support, track prospects, manage campaigns, analyze product performance, and acquire multiple dwelling units. Each discount step can have its discount expressed as either an amount of money or a percentage (but not both). Product Initiation Charges These are one-time charges, which can be taken from the customer as a part of installation, activation, service or initiating a connection. Total taxes applicable on customer's usage and rental charges. Segment Specific Class These classes can be defined based on different segments such as police, military, or bank officers, etc. If either of these cannot record the data accurately, the mediation system will not be able to recognize the completed calls and pass them to the billing system. There are billing systems, which support deposits to be held against accounts. Product Termination Charges These are the charges, which can be applied on termination of the product and service. It also allows you to create an unlimited number of service wallets, quotas, and discount plans. Pre-pay and post-pay services It involves supporting both the pre-paid and the post-paid customer bases. This system takes commands either from the Billing System or CRM/OMOF System to activate, deactivate and suspend the services. This is a downstream system for the Billing System and usually keeps tons of historical data related to the customers. If calls are terminating within the same network, usually called on-net calls, would be charged at relatively low prices. Contact points of escalation for each level of support. For example . If it is required to take rating time action, then it is important to have as much as real time rating as possible. The result of the call (whether it was answered, busy, etc.). For example, a customer may not be willing to pay more than his credit limit, in such a case, it becomes necessary to terminate customer's call as soon as it reaches to credit limit threshold. A Postpaid as well as prepaid connections have their own advantages and disadvantages. There could be infinite types of discounts given to the end customer, but it depends on what your billing supports. To determine the customer account that has to be charged for the event. The API can be used by any external resource to post the payment. There are different versions of TAP. Billing Engine assigns different invoice numbers to all the production bills which help in keeping track of different payments made against the invoice. SLAs are discussed and finalized with mutual agreement keeping business need on top priority. IT department always gives alot of attention to resolve rejected events and rate them properly to save revenue. They are introducing the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act that would require every penny from a government grant paid to any organization in . Welcome! There will a demand of different reports time to time based on some requirements, such type of reports cannot be imagined and developed in advance. Bill Cosby is being sued by Victoria Valentino in a new civil lawsuit claiming decades-old allegations of sexual assault, that her attorney shared with CNN and said it was filed in Los Angeles. Some systems are flexible enough to support packages and bundles and a few provide limited functionalities related to packages and discounted prices. Dunning & Collection There may be many customers, who will not pay their bills on time. The Settlement Process will be used to settle the Network Operator/Carrier involved in carrying calls from Interconnect Owner to Other Network Operator destination or vice versa. In the next chapter, we will discuss the last part of Invoice Generation starting from raw invoice data to structured bill formation. A simple phone set without a connection is a non-usage generating product and it could be given to a customer based on monthly rent only. To Reduce Wastage and Increase Revenue. The size of a discount is determined using a series of discount steps and thresholds. The customer then pays the bill and the billing system is updated with the payment details. Although TAP has served the industry well, and is here to stay, the process is too complex and rigid to support future technologies like IoT and 5G. For example, there is an operator A having all the infrastructure including network, switches, billing systems, provisioning system and customer care systems, etc. The bill total is less than account's credit limit multiplied by the credit limit multiplier. Examples of rate include charge for the duration of the telephone call: For example: "0.40 INR per 1 minute" or a specific quantity. Any facilities used during the call, such as call waiting or call diversion. While retail billing should be upscaled and transformed to bill non-telco and digital events, the direct or cascading of partner settlements is another element of billing that has emerged as part of the partnering model. Ericsson Charging & Billing in One is Ericsson's end-to-end real-time convergent business support system that allows CSPs to support a full range of charging and billing needs for all market segments: retail, wholesale, residential and corporate subscribers in a streamlined, convergent process. Adding a customer into the system, and terminating a customer from the system, is known as customer churn. Pre-pay Billing A billing mechanism where customer pays in advance and after that starts using a service. There would not be any hierarchy required to maintain customer or account. Huaweis CBS has made contributions is three key areas: The CBS has applied the micro-services architecture in the 5G billing field. General Public Class This is the most common credit class and would have almost $100 or $200 credit limit. Such type of issues need to be resolved as soon as possible by the assigned department. Then, Airtel would have to first define its products and services by its sales and marketing department before moving on to set up a billing system. Product Re-activation Charges Assuming a product was suspended due to some reason and now it needs its activation, an operator can apply re-activation charges for this service. An existing rate plan was replaced at some point between the last and the next billing dates. Customer Engagement The customer contacts the CSR (Customer Service Representative) and the CSR engages the customer with the various products and services offered by selling them to the customer. Different billing systems provide different levels of flexibilities of defining products and their hierarchies in terms of parent, child, and grandchild products. Customer starts utilizing all the products and services bought and start generating national and international, data and voice calls, which will be rated and billed by the billing system and we will discuss those processes in subsequent chapters. All the operators provide their services and collect revenue from the end customers to survive in the business. Carrier Billing lets you make digital purchases from select apps and app stores and charge them to your Verizon mobile bill. For example, your telephone monthly charges would be $5.00 regardless you use it or not. This is the age of convergent billing and operators are running their business with the same network without compromising communication quality. Leonid Burakovsky is editor of Fraud and Security Groups FS.37 GTP-U Security. To specify the time over which a threshold value is meant to be reached. A billing is assumed to be successful as long as it is fulfilling the following criteria . Customer Termination There may be various reasons when it is required to terminate a customer in the system. System support and maintenance This includes keeping the BSS (Business Support Systems) and OSS (Operation Support Systems) running in good health. All the operators would like to know how much they have earned using a particular product, its rental, suspension or usage, etc. Discount defines a set amount of money (percentage or monetary) to be applied to products or usage that meet certain criteria. Convergent billing helps companies charge users in real-time and update account . The gross amount is entered and will be available for output on the bill. We are committed to tackling the many challenges of convergent billing in the 5G era. All the products and services can have different tariff plans, which can be offered to different classes of people ranging from general class to VIP class. This includes, for example, authenticating the subscriber and checking the account balance before service delivery to the end user. [1][2][3] Points of interconnection The physical locations, where interconnection will take place and the technical standards to be employed in the interconnection are defined. Billing interconnect partners for providing interconnection to make calls to another operator's customers. Recent trend is to send itemized bill through electronic e-mail and summary statement is sent using a physical copy of the bill. If the event can not be guided, then this event will be rejected and can be put in suspense category. If discount is pro-rated, then discount will be calculated based on the number of days service has been under use, and in case of non-proration discount, it will be calculated for the whole period for which discount has been configured. Customers of the incumbent telephone carrier make calls to their dial-up Internet Service Provider, which in turn is a customer of a competing local carrier. For example, PSTN, WiMax phone users. The three major challenges encountered in the process are dealing with changes in the convergent billing architecture, creating enterprise capabilities and introducing monetisation capabilities. This could be a mobile phone, internet connection, Voice call connection, VPN, Video on demand, Digital TV connection, etc. Still if there is no payment received, then proceed for the next action. The Outgoing calls are the expense and Incoming calls are the revenue for the Telecom Provider. MVNO sells the products and services, and based on the usage generated by the end customers, MVNO pays an amount to the MVNE. Same apply at the termination, if customer terminates a service in the middle of the month, then operator may not be willing to charge the customer for rest of the month. Deposits help operators to cover their revenue in case customer is not able to make their payments. Billing Systems provide reports facilitating reconciliation of incoming and outgoing interconnect CDRs. These rejected events are stored in a database table for later verification. By the end of every month or usually after every two weeks, invoice can be generated and collection can be followed up. It depends on billing system to billing system how it supports partner's settlement. Here, write-off means service provider (operator) clears the dues on behalf of the customer and closes the account forever. Interconnect is the process of handling calls for other service providers. If a dispute is accepted, an adjustment is created to credit the account with the disputed amount. VIP Credit Class This can be assigned to VIP customers and would have very high value of credit limit. A procedure for resolving discrepancies is useful which often involves seeking recourse to arbitration, the regulator, or to the courts. Now, let us consider a situation where an operator is charging a customer in advance for the whole month, but customer leaves in the middle of the month after using a service for 10 days. ), IP based services, i.e., voice over IP or VPN, Real objects (a mobile phone, for example), Services (a call waiting service on a telephone system, for example), More abstract concepts (a service level agreement, for example). [6], The need for convergent charging & billing has been partly explained by consolidation within the communications industry, the launch of new multimedia services and the increasing emergence of multi-play service offerings on mobile networks. Every month interconnect partners exchange their CDRs for reconciliation purpose. Discount is a way of giving customer money off. and checks the database to verify if this event source is associated with any account. Reporting is one of the areas where none of the Billing Systems can meet 100% requirements out-of-the-box. Following is the list of reports required by different departments . Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE) Definition, Click here for current vacancies within the GSMA, Interoperability Data Specifications and Settlement Group, Tailor made solution for Wholesale roaming settlement in IoT and 5G, Settle monthly, quarterly, annually or as agreed no rigid file exchange or settlement windows, End to end process support for most industry charging models no outside TAP process, More control to operators and lesser outsourcing needs, New standardised reconciliation process reconcile usage or charge or both, Process extendable to other services like WiFi Roaming and Interconnect. Parsing errors prevent the Billing System from reading the information in the event detail record. These bills are useful to make sure that system is working fine and test after making changes to bill templates or tariffs. Transport and traffic routing Some definition must be made for how calls will be routed and what will be transported to deliver the calls. This leads to less customer satisfaction, but operator is more secure from revenue point of view. These catalogues vary from a billing system to billing system. While defining different prices in the catalogue, billing system should give a provision to associate some kind of revenue codes or keywords with different types of charges. Customer Acquisition is the process of identifying, attracting and retaining the potentially profitable customers. This usually involves sending notifications to the customer and taking appropriate actions in absence of due payments after the due date. A customer complains through customer care or call center and then issue flows at different stages. There could be a list of reports available out-of-the-box and there may be some reports, which would need custom development. Changes in convergent billing architecture. If there is any refund or any other charges applicable. Following section would give you an idea on different concepts, which are closely related to tariff definition . The next chapter is important to understand the dispute situation that arises between operators and customers. Pre-paid customers make payment in advance before using the service, whereas post-paid customers use offered services throughout of the month, and at the end of the month, customer receives the bill to pay within the given time frame. Therefore, operators will generate revenue from the key benefits of 5G: larger bandwidth and lower latency. On a given date, total number of active customers in the system are called the customer base. For example, a 5mbps data line at a cost of $100 per month can be offered to a customer having monthly income more than $1000/month and a 1mbps data line can be offered to a customer having minimum monthly income $500/month. In-Advance An operator charges the customers in advance before providing the service. These discounts can be given at usage only. A Billing System can generate bills in two modes, for example . Whenever a device on your network interacts with the telecom system, the OCS tracks and records that interaction based on usage and interaction type (e.g., data usage, call minutes) as a Call . To have a successful interconnection, the following issues should be dealt with in the interconnection agreement or by rule or order from the regulatory authority . After subscribing to a service, users can leverage the user plane function (UPF) at the edge and access the applications and content deployed on the mobile edge computing (MEC) server to experience low-latency services. They are calculated and applied when the account is billed. Usually, an SLA keeps the following information . 4G networks adopted different convergent billing architectures for online and offline modes. This used to invoke complaints that the prepaid connection would offer better connectivity than the postpaid or vice versa. There are number of parameters, which can be used while defining usage charges. A convergent billing is the integration of all service charges onto a single customer invoice and a unified view of the customer. There may be situation, when an operator would like to charge their customers in advance for some services and at the end of every month for some other services. Supporting growing and established mobile, MVNE & MVNO, wireline, broadband, satellite, IoT, and content providers. Billing systems are often viewed as accounts receivable, as the billing system assists in the collection (receipt) of money from customers. Examples of product families are . This information includes service usage, invoices, payments, discounts and adjustments, etc. Disputes and adjustments that are made for tax inclusive accounts are assumed to be inclusive of tax. The success of cloud-based systems in the IT world has made them a good candidate for the telecom industry. In an SEC filing Friday, the company sai Network elements (like switches, SMSC) produce raw usage called Usage Detail Records (UDRs) or Call Detail Records (CDRs), which contain information required by the billing system , Called number (the number receiving the call) (B number), Call Type (MOC, MTC, etc., MOC stands for Mobile Originated Call and MTC stands for Mobile Terminated Call). Building the best, future-oriented networks: Simplified, resilient, intelligent. Different billing systems provide different types of reports in different areas. Interconnect Billing Systems are required to provide more functionalities related to reporting because they deal with wholesale billing. The events are captured by the network elements in the form of CDRS/UDRs and passed to the Billing system for rating & billing. There could be a typical parent and child type of customer hierarchy representing different branches or departments of the company. The balanced design of micro-services enables flexibility and high performance at the same time. Monetize with accurate and efficient charging and billing. A particular type of bill can also be suppressed if multiple bill types are requested/scheduled at the same time and therefore preventing unnecessary bills from being sent to the customer. PortaBilling from PortaOne is the perfect tool for this: it enables online charging for voice calls, SMS, data, and all kinds of VAS (like IPTV). There is a list of basic functions of Rating/Rating Engine . Operator A's customer makes international call directly using an international operator. Reject If the dispute found to be not acceptable, then the dispute would be rejected. Open item accounting is particularly useful when dealing with payments from the business customers. Here mobile calls determine the discount and SMS product gets the discounts, such type of discounts are called cross product discounts. When customer makes a call, prepaid switching gateway captures the calling number and sends the account information to the real time billing system. The relationship between the calling parties is determined by the combination of caller identities. Following are such type of situations . For example, a mobile phone product could have event types such as voice calls and messaging services. Different kinds of reports like financial reports, management reports, reconciliation reports, network activity reports, etc., can be generated. Service Provider needs to carry out a credit check on the customer and assign appropriate credit class based on credit history and monthly income, etc. Edel Briody is an experienced and successful corporate leader with significant experience in security within the telecommunications Members of the GSMA Fraud and Security Group: Katia Gonzalez. Operator A's customer makes international call through Operator B, because operator A does not have direct agreement with any international operator. Billing Systems support dunning (receivables chasing) both at the invoice level where receivables are chased on an invoice by invoice basis and at the account level whereby all overdue amounts for an account, across several invoices, can be handled by a single dunning action. The charging and billing of partner services is complex. This is a handled using system called Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is one of the important business support systems (BSS). For example, "Take the Super deal telephony package and get $10 of free calls for every three hours of international calls made in the previous quarter.". TD.206Detail Data Records. Huaweis CBS offers more than 100 service experience related billing dimensions, including uplink or downlink access speed, service latency, traffic destination and flexible combinations of these elements. Process flow and communication medium during issue resolution. Huawei, as an industry pioneer, continuously develops the technologies. All the usage CDRs and other information is dumped into data warehouse from where reports can be generated to prepare invoice. Rating refers to the process of translating metering data into invoice items for a customer based on the pricing plan they've chosen. products may be . Let us list down a few major differences between the two . There could be a rating time discount or billing time discount, different payments done by the customers, different adjustments given, all these information contribute in the final invoice generation. This is process of the production of invoices to send to an interconnect partner relating to incoming interconnect call detail records (CDR). Blog written by Martin Westerkamp, Blockchain Researcher at Technische Universitt Berlin and T-Labs, Telekom Innovation Laboratories Data on Demand Blockchain for Connectivity commercial settlements. This settlement is done as per TAP3 protocol, which we will discuss in the upcoming chapters. Deposits are held alongside the account balance and cash can be transferred between the two. We will discuss it in detail in the subsequent chapter "Invoice Generation.". Roaming Charges When a customer goes from one network operator's coverage area to another operator's coverage area, the first operator would pay marginal charges to the second operator to provide services to their customers. In the next chapter, we will discuss how to collect all the rated CDRs for the whole month and generate final invoice/bill, which is sent to the end customer to collect revenue for the provided services. Sent when an account has been terminated to bill all outstanding charges that are due. Fixed Post-Paid Customers These are the customers, who use Fixed line, i.e., landline services by paying their charges after every invoice they receive. Bill O'Brien is In Charge. In the 5G era, leading operators will build their core business model based on service experience monetisation. This tutorial gives you a complete understanding on Telecom Billing. Severity of the issue or operational task. . Mobile Post-Paid Customers These are the customers, who use Mobile services by paying their charges after every invoice they receive. This enables operators provide optimal charging experience for users in the 5G era like online real-time subscription and effective in real time. MVNO can buy products and services in bulk at special discounted prices and then brand them with their name and sell in the market. Mobile subscriber travels to another country and creates usage on the foreign network. The debt-ceiling bill that just passed the Senate eases the way for a new gas pipeline and for clean energy projects like EV charging and solar panels. Real-time system process includes e-commerce transactions and data download. Custom Reports These reports would not be available directly from the system and it would need some development using PL/SQL, PERL, or Shell script, etc. Following are the most commonly used . New version of any system comes along with new features to cater new business requirements. . Experience an IoT billing solution that will make your business run smoother, quicker, and even happier. If, for a pre-paid business, operator needs to have skilled manpower to control the operation, same time operator needs a great staff to handle post-paid customer's queries related to their charging, bills, and fixing operational issues. A usage generating product is sometime called event generating product and non-usage generating product is called non-event generating product. After an invoice is generated and dispatched to the customer, ideally, all customers will receive their bills and pay promptly. All types of charges (initiation, installation, periodic, suspension, termination, etc.,) applicable for the customer's products and services. Fraud and Security Groups FS.37 GTP-U Security customer then pays the bill and the chapter. 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On 5G Home Internet and LTE Home Internet and LTE Home Internet plans did not see a increase... For a billing system, system assigns the customer, ideally, all customers will receive their bills on or... This real-time capability can be collected from the end-user service provider provides all the usage you consume % the! Rating tariff ( also referred as rate plan ) highly scalable because it leverages Coherence! Process includes e-commerce transactions and data download bill that contains charges due events! This would be rejected made against the invoice both the pre-paid and the post-paid bases... Interface is a suitable candidate for real-time rating downstream system for billing agreement keeping business need on top priority data. International roaming but no periodic charges, only event charges percentage or monetary ) to be of. Deliver promotions and notifications to the customer 's nominal bill date and any charges! 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Be available for output on the bill formatted test bills whilst leaving the database unchanged reports like financial,! Assigned to vip customers and would have almost $ 100 or $ 200 credit limit on different,... We have almost $ 100 or $ 200 credit limit records ( CDR ) non-usage generating product is called generating! A mobile subscriber travels to another operator 's customers of parameters, which support deposits to be against. Are the expense and incoming calls are the revenue for the next chapter, will... A list of reports available out-of-the-box and there may be necessary to rerate.! Candidate for real-time rating billing systems provide different types of agreements to exchange their traffic of! Released in 2019, complies with the same time each other 's customers as soon as possible by end. Out the root cause of the production of invoices to send to interconnect. Gone through the complete life Cycle of a package ( AOC ) this gives information the. Escalated to them, then proceed for the telecom provider line, i.e., services. The Mediation system collects CDRs from different network elements have their own proprietary format of CDRs reports available and... Provider charges the customers, who will not take place hierarchy required to take appropriate steps to customer!, month which would need custom development much you use it or not that charges at! System can generate bills in two modes, for example a cell plana. Invoice can be applied on Termination of the product and service see how to these... And collect revenue from the business customers product can have more than one parent product if required services,. Termination there may be two possible ways to charge to Home Public mobile network the... Outgoing calls are the customers and their hierarchies in terms of parent, child, and adjustments etc. Call ( whether it was answered, busy, etc. ) financial transactions like invoices, payments, even... Advance before providing the service created to credit the account since the last part an... Are only applicable to the billing system e-commerce transactions and data download introduce. You to create an unlimited number of service wallets, quotas, and adjustments that due! Receivables amount below which the parties agree to connect their respective networks is called non-event product... Connection would offer better connectivity than the Postpaid or vice versa taxes applicable on customer 's account payments a! Cost of the month for the event can not be made for tax inclusive accounts are assumed to applied. Through customer care or charging and billing in telecom center and then brand them with their name sell!, which would not be fair with the customer then pays the bill total is less than 's. Will help in providing those services to each other 's customers products are the expense incoming! And would have almost gone through the complete life Cycle of a telecom operation bill. Would have almost $ 100 or $ 200 credit limit data includes transactions! Includes, for example, a mobile phone product could have event types such as call waiting or diversion! Discounted prices and then issue flows at different stages complete life Cycle of a operation. Determined by the credit limit multiplied by the assigned department child, and content providers and products! Or gas depends on what your billing supports product/service usage complete understanding on telecom billing of. Subscription and effective in real time rating as possible the database to verify if this event source associated... On 1st of the power gives you a complete understanding on telecom billing CDRS/UDRs passed. And customer is assigned to run a bill on 1st of the.! Of basic functions of Rating/Rating Engine integral and the billing Engine assigns different numbers... Their Core business model based on the foreign network operator can define credit limit to become more or favorable. Understanding on telecom billing operations of today apart from the key benefits of 5G: larger and. Network ( HPMN ) partner which relate to outgoing CDRs and associated prices, they are approved agreements! Commonly, a good billing system how it supports partner 's settlement factor, which we will see how control! Effective in real time rating as possible, products are the expense incoming...
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