CANTO 2005 Towards Next-Generation Convergent Billing Systems CTO – Bohdan Zabawskyj June 2005.

CANTO 2005

Towards Next-Generation Convergent Billing Systems

CTO – Bohdan Zabawskyj

June 2005

Agenda

ObjectivesReview the requirements of next-generation convergent billing solutions

AgendaRedknee

Subscriber & Carrier Requirements

Billing

Traditional Approaches

Real-Time Value-Based Rating

Open Architectures

The Value Chain

Summary

Products with Results

Redknee is a provider of services infrastructure products to wireless

network operators

Our products enable customers to enrich and extend their network service capabilities and service

offerings for their subscribers

Our product categories include Real Time Payment & Rating, Messaging,

Location and Call/Data control

Redknee’s clients benefit by being able to offer more competitive services

and interactive content that their subscribers value

Preferred vendor by leading customers

Proven products with over 200 deployments

Significant network and product experience

Awards for

innovation and management

Essential Service Attributes

Services must embody the interrelated user values of:Conspicuous value

Value and operation of service is immediately appreciated Profound simplicity

Presentment of only essential controls and informationSelf-evidence

Controls are intuitive, context sensitive, and adaptive

Carriers must provide capabilities to improve services per the key user values:

Personal Tailored to the individual & adaptive

Localized Information relevant to the subscriber’s current location

Timely Relevant to the subscriber’s current activities and not delayed so that it becomes a nuisance or irritant

ActionableSo that the subscriber can actively react to and control a service in an intuitive manner

Carrier Requirements

• Leverage existing infrastructure

• Non-functional requirements

• Support of open industry standards

• Differentiate operator offering from competing service providers

• Offer flexible and configurable rate plans

• Customize rate plans for subscriber groups

• Enable application/content partners to effectively and rapidly launch new mobile services

• Provide device/platform transparency to subscribers and service providers

• Provide a scalable, robust, and evolvable system

• Deliver personalized experience to mobile subscribers, while ensuring subscriber privacy

Traditional Billing Strategies

Billing Systems

DSLAM

Switch

DataNetwork

CDR Mediation

CDRs

CDRs

CDRs

CDRs

Rating

Processed CDRs

Billing & Settlement

Customer CareCustomer

Information

PrintersInvoices

GPRS/PDSN

MSC/VLR

SCPIP

SMS-C/MMS-C

IN based billing mechanisms are isolated from post-based billing and settlement processes.

Core Network Infrastructure

Traditional Prepaid and Postpaid Billing Architectures

Rating of services have traditionally been undertaken by separate platforms for wireline and wireless services.

Subscribers receive multiple invoices and/or charges associated with services are distributed in a non-intuitive manner.

The inability to accrue value in a meaningful manner precludes the formulation of a clear pricing strategy and results in customer confusion which in turn increases op-ex costs.

To the extent that CDRs or events services are not consolidated - the CDR mediation platform cannot correlate disparate billing records produced by existing network elements. This in turn precludes a cohesive billing capability.

CDRs

Mediation Function

Copyright (c) - Redknee

Without Converged Billing

Problem 1Customer receives multiple bills per service despite being the same service provider

Problem 2Carrier cannot provide cross-service rating and billing schemas

Problem 3Multiple billing and rating systems greatly increases infrastructure, ownership and support costs.

Problem 4Multiple CRM applications = higher training cost and poor customer satisfaction

Customers

Three Key Issues For Next-Generation Rating Solutions

It Is Not About Bandwidth and ‘bps’, It Is About Creating Value from the Perspective of a Seamless Subscriber Experience:– Cohesive subscriber management

– Service access across multiple access technologies

– Open architectures for subscriber context and preference information

Moving from MoU (Minutes of Use) to Billable Events– Billing & provisioning are not adequate

– Usage based rating is inappropriate and confusing

Value Creation– Latent demand for value based services

– Services are increasingly focused chronologically and spatially

• Traditional service deployment tactics are becoming less relevant

• Operator development & testing for 6 months

• Event that is deployed for 2 weeks

• Billing cycle of 3 months

Need for Real-Time Rating

• A convergent billing environment is associated with the rating of any transactional event, irrespective of the delivery technology involved, in real-time.

• Allows transaction-oriented charges to be accrued and applied against a given subscriber over any chronological period – allows for:– Prepaid services

– Postpaid services

– Per-use

– Bucket billing

• Enable the application of complex rating structures traditionally associated with a postpaid environment to a prepaid environment

Convergence Requirements

A convergent environment must incorporates the following:

Concurrent support of:

Integration with existing/anticipated IN/ISC (IP multi-media Service Control) trigger based functionality.

Processing of CDRs.

Provision of intermediation capabilities where required

Versatile and high performance rating engine

Supports both transactional real-time and high-performance batch processing on a single platform.

Events can be associated with multiple rules and charges and can also be associated with loyalty programs concurrently.

Powerful, user-friendly Customer Relationship Management tools.

Intuitive GUIs allowing users (or customer care representatives) to view historical usage or alter preferences/subscription information.

Real-time engine permits charges or payments to be immediately reflected (visible) in the account.

With Converged Billing

Single Invoice for all services.

Integrated rating/billing schemas – e.g. bundle discounts, loyalty plans and promotions.

Hybrid rating scenarios – prepaid wireless data, contract wireline and wireless voice, usage based DSL rating.

Charges reflect value of the service including regional/chronological/QoS factors.

Single, scalable solution for all services – Total Cost of Ownership decreases.

Customers

Implications of Open Architectures

Relevant market driver is the pervasive adoption of Open Systems Architectures…

…which creates greater innovation and value across the entire industry value chain:

Example: “Plug and Play” enabled the PC software ecosystem

Example: TCP/IP & HTML enabled the networking & ‘e-commerce’ ecosystem

Value of an “Open” Approach

Open Systems offer proven business benefits:

Increased ROI with Reduced Risk

Flexibility & Interoperability

Simpler and Quicker Integration

 Larger ecosystem and resource pools

Ability to choose “best of breed” vendors

An implication of opening networks is the shift from vertical products to horizontally integrated solutions

Open Architectures in Wireless Carriers

Network convergence driven by low cost bits (IP, VoIP)

Device convergence driven by function density (phone, PDA)

OSS/BSS monetization evolving to real-time (Redknee)

Service convergence driven by mobility

and personalization

M-Commerce Value Chain

Carriers have a central role in the m-commerce value chain:– As a trusted intermediary

– Support of micro-transactions

– The provision of value added services and information• Subscriber context and preferences

•

CSCFGGSN

HSS

Internet

Core Network Infrastructure

M-Commerce Value Chain in an IMS Environment

SGSN

ServiceCreationEnvironment

Carrier and 3-rd Party Application Developers

Open Object Oriented APIs focusing on session and content control (CORBA, SOAP-XML)

Services Include: · Traditional IN Services (Prepaid, VPN, PNS)

· Contextual Services (Location/Presence)

· Community-of-Interest Based Services (multi-player gaming, chat)

Smartphones

Network Abstraction and Real-Time Rating

GUPServer

User Profile Web Services (Charging, Account Management, Presence, Preferences, Terminal Information etc.)

State of subscriber is dynamically used to optimize services in Real-Time

SIP or DIAMETER

SIP

SIP enabled clients communicate communicate with other applications or with centralized servers.

Copyright (c) - Redknee

Enable the 3G Vision Today

Open Service & Application Creation Environment

Open architectures provide an effective and efficient service creation environment where existing network capabilities can be accessed and leveraged using object oriented API’s

Real Time Transacted Services

Facilitates the correlation of value to a given service by supporting application of transactional or periodic charging of any event to any class of subscriber (pre-paid, post-paid, or combined)

Time To Market

Accelerates velocity of service creation environment to provide a suite of activations which are contextually and chronologically relevant to an individual subscriber

Redknee [email protected]

http://www.redknee.com Fax: + 1 905 625 2773

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