Telecom Billing

Thursday, June 2, 2011 1 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Content
OSS/BSS
Overview of CRM, OM/OF, Billing,
Mediation,Provisioning, Payments,
Collections, Inventory
Overview of Interconnect
Overview of Roaming Process Flow

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 BSS/OSS

Thursday, June 2, 2011 3 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 BSS
BSS stands for Business Support Systems.
Software applications that support customer-
facing activities. Billing, order management,
customer relationship management, call
center automation, are all BSS applications.
focus toward customers and business
partners. Manages order, subscriber,
pricing, rating, and billing information.

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 OSS
OSS is either Operational Support System
or Operations Support System.
Software (occasionally hardware)
applications that support back-office
activities which operate a telcos network,
provision and maintain customer services.
built around product, service, and resource
inventories.

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 Billing Introduction
Collecting, aggregating, applying the required charges
and generating the invoices to the customers
Also receiving and reporting the Payments
Timely Billing
Accuracy

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 Overview

CRM, OMOF

Provisioning,
Network Inventory

Mediation

Guiding & Rating, taxes

Discount, Adjustments, billing

Reporting, DWH, FMS, Supply
Chain,

Payments, Collections

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 Customer classifications
Pre-paid, Post Paid
Individual, Hierarchical
Class based like VIP, General,
Segmented like Police, Military etc
Mobile, Fixed Line
Retail, wholesale like MVNO/Re-sellers,
Interconnect Operators, Roaming Partners

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 Product
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)
bundle more than one product into a single
group as a Package

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 Tariff/Rate/Price Plan
Product Initiation Charges
Product Periodic Charges, Product
Termination Charges, Product Suspension
Charges ,Product Re-activation Charges,
Product Usage Charges e.g. Distance
based, Volume based, duration based, peak
hour rates

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 CRM Billing Provisioning

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 CRM/OMOF BILLING
CRM ( Customer Relationship Management) /OMOF (Order
Management and Order Fulfillment ) system contacts with
the billing system and billing system contacts with
provisioning system to provision the services and network
inventory system as well to assign phone numbers or IP
addresses etc.
Second possibility could be that CRM/OMOF system itself
contacts with provisioning system to provision the services
and network inventory system as well to assign phone
numbers or IP addresses etc

Thursday, June 2, 2011 12 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 CRM

Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for
products.,

Create and manage customer profiles, Offering Packages/Products

Manage all interactions with customers inquiries, trouble tickets,
requests, and responses.

Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on
customer/account related

updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification,
request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits.

customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, pro-active
campaigns, and retention/loyalty.

Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences,
account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details,
bill cycle details, and customer interactions.

Validate customer identity ( Customer Verification)
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 OM OF
Issuing new customer orders, modifying
open customer orders, or canceling open
customer orders;
Workflow Orchestration, tracking order
starting from its creation till its completion
Updating of the Customer Inventory
Database to reflect that the specific product
offering has been allocated, modified, or
cancelled;

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 OM OF
Verifying whether specific non-standard
offerings sought by customers are feasible
and supportable;
Checking the credit worthiness of
customers as part of the customer order
process;
Breaks Order into requests for other NEs
Request will have set of tasks for a NE
Assigning and tracking customer
provisioning activities;
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 Provisioning
takes commands either from the Billing
System or CRM/OMOF System to activate,
de-activate and suspend the services
contacts with core network system to
activate, de-activate or suspend the
services
sends the response back to either the Billing
System or the CRM/OMOF system

Thursday, June 2, 2011 16 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Network Inventory
maintains all the network identifiers like
phone numbers, MSISDN, IP addresses,
email addresses etc
maintain the life cycle of network identifiers
which starts with available and then flows
through different stages like activation,
suspend, terminate, quarantine, and again
available.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 17 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Mediation Billing Flow

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 Mediation
Collecting CDR files from Network Elements
Validating CDR files e.g. duplicate files,
missing File sequence number
Decode CDRs based on Record Layout of
Network Element
Validate CDRs e.g missing data in CDRs
Aggregate CDRs based on Call ID, Partial
Record indicator & Counters.
Encode & distribute CDRs for different
system like billing, FMS, Interconnect, DWH
Thursday, June 2, 2011 19 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
 Guiding & Rating
CDRs from the Mediation System or other service providers
or roaming partners in case of roaming usage
Validating the CDRs, eliminate any duplicate records.
determine the customer account -- Guiding.
calculate the cost/price of the event as per the rate.
apply rating time discounts.
To store the rated event in the database for a billing purpose
or send it to the external system for billing.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 20 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

Billing Engine generate following :
Usage Charges from Rated CDRs in Billing database.
All type of charges ( initiation, installation, periodic,
suspension, termination etc.) product and services.
If there is any refund or any other charges applicable.
Total outstanding from previous bills and LPC.
Total payments made by the customer in the given month.
Total adjustment in favor of or against the customer.
Total discount given to the customer.
Total taxes on usage, NRC/one time and rental/RC charges.
Billing configuration parameter required to run the Billing
Engine, for example payment due date etc.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 21 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
 BILL Formatting/Invoicing
Accepts Data from Billing in ASCII, XML or
any other file format
Generates bill in different type of files like
PS, PDF, AFP, XML
Can have different format based on
customer profile
Can support regional language, currency,
marketing messages
Email bill, Duplicate bill, SMS-bill, Bill view
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 Payments
Payment methods like Cheque, Cash,
Credit Card, Direct Debit etc
Through Bulk Utility from Billing for Cash,
Cheque
Bank interface with API or text file with
billing system for payment transfers.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 23 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Collection
Soft Collection Actions Sending emails,
SMS reminders and requests, Calling the
customer
Hard Collection Actions - barring the
services, or disconnecting the services
If all fails 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.
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 Interconnect

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 Interconnect
Interconnect is the process of handling calls
for other service providers. e.g.
Operator A's customer makes national call to Operator B's
customer. In this case operator A will pay to B.
Operator A's customer makes international call through
Operator B, because operator A does not have direct
agreement with any international operator. In this case
operator A will pay to operator B and operator B will take
care of setteling down international operator.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 26 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Interconnect CDRs, Reports
Every month interconnect partners
exchange their CDRs, Reports for
reconciliation purpose since error are
possible due to different tariff set-up,
missing CDR.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 27 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Interconnect Billing
Bilateral or Unilateral Agreement
Settlement Process Done for a service for
a period like Monthly, Bi-Monthly, Can be
Automated or on demand.
The Outgoing (Expense to Interconnect
Owner) and Incoming (Revenue to
Interconnect Owner) traffic
Netting is done by multiple settlement
period for the multiple services.
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 Roaming

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 Roaming Partners
National or International Roaming.
TAP3 (Transfer Account Procedure 3)
protocol/Standard used to transfer the CDRs
data and settlement for the services.
Returned Accounts Procedure (RAP) files
are rejected files/event from TAP files by
Operator due to errors
Roaming Partner will rate the calls and then
charge the subscribers home network for all
the calls within a file.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 30 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
 Roaming Process Flow
Create TAP3 standard file send to the Clearhouse
Clearhouse is body who interface between roaming partners
to help them to exchange their CDRs, setting up roaming
agreements and resolving any dispute.
Clearhouse Submit the Data to the Operator it belongs.
Operator process the TAP files , send back the RAP files to
Clearhouse to submit it to Roaming Partner
Operator Invoices its customer for Roaming Usages.

Thursday, June 2, 2011 31 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 Some Billing System Vendors
system website
Convergys IRB http://www.convergys.com

Amdocs Ensemble http://www.amdocs.com

Ascade http://www.ascade.com/
Kenan FX http://www.comverse.com/
Single View http://www.intecbilling.com
Ericsson IN http://www.ericsson.com
Oracle BRM http://www.oracle.com

Thursday, June 2, 2011 32 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal

 THANKING YOU

Thursday, June 2, 2011 33 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal