Telecommunications for Dummies – Telecom Basics and BSS. Introduction This post is intended to be a crash course for beginners who wish to understand at a “broad level” how Business Suppor telecom carrier’s network and more importantly how they connect to the telecom network elements over standard protoc Hence, the text is more “conversational” in nature rather than completely “technical”. Elementary examples of simple call setup procedures have also been included, as they are required for a holistic unders beginning from a call setup, to its charging, rating and billing. Background Telecom operations from the perspective of a carrier are divided into two broad categories: OSS and BSS. Operations Support Subsystems (OSS) is an aggregation of functions that enable the operator to provision and manage network elements. Provisioning implies “making an entry or a record” of some resource. This resource may be a custom as dongles or even a network element such as a call control switch. For example if a new customer is acquired, his entir such as his name, address, phone number allotted etc. This is customer provisioning. An example of managing an inventory could be as follows. Dongles procured by the carrier need to be recorded in the inventory management system. Each dongle would undergo Eg: When the dongle is first procured, it is recorded to be in stock. When the dongle is dispatched to a retail store, its st management system to be “for sale”. When a customer purchases the dongle, its status changes to “sold” and it is linked it. On the other hand, Business Support Subsystems is an aggregation of functions which are used for managing an operat and providing an operator with complete clarity on the performance and management of his diverse lines of businesses. Home Info Country Headlines MNO Networks MVNE Providers MVNO Companies Resources Legal Prepaid MVNO | Telecommunications for Dummies – Telecom Basics a... http://www.prepaidmvno.com/definitions-2/telecommunications-for-d... 1 of 14 2/12/2012 5:50 PM
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Prepaid MVNO – Telecom Basics and Introduction to BSS
Prepaid MVNO – Telecom Basics and Introduction to BSS
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Telecommunications for Dummies – Telecom Basics and Introduction to
BSS.
Introduction
This post is intended to be a crash course for beginners who wish to understand at a “broad level” how Business Support Subsystem compone
telecom carrier’s network and more importantly how they connect to the telecom network elements over standard protocols.
Hence, the text is more “conversational” in nature rather than completely “technical”.
Elementary examples of simple call setup procedures have also been included, as they are required for a holistic understanding of the entire ec
beginning from a call setup, to its charging, rating and billing.
Background
Telecom operations from the perspective of a carrier are divided into two broad categories: OSS and BSS.
Operations Support Subsystems (OSS) is an aggregation of functions that enable the operator to provision and manage their inventory, custom
network elements. Provisioning implies “making an entry or a record” of some resource. This resource may be a customer, a value added servi
as dongles or even a network element such as a call control switch. For example if a new customer is acquired, his entire record has to be sav
such as his name, address, phone number allotted etc. This is customer provisioning.
An example of managing an inventory could be as follows.
Dongles procured by the carrier need to be recorded in the inventory management system. Each dongle would undergo a lifecycle.
Eg: When the dongle is first procured, it is recorded to be in stock. When the dongle is dispatched to a retail store, its status is changed in the
management system to be “for sale”. When a customer purchases the dongle, its status changes to “sold” and it is linked to the customer’s ide
it.
On the other hand, Business Support Subsystems is an aggregation of functions which are used for managing an operator’s day-to-day busines
and providing an operator with complete clarity on the performance and management of his diverse lines of businesses.
Home Info Country Headlines MNO Networks MVNE Providers MVNO Companies Resources Legal
connected successfully, the customer will not be liable for paying for this event. However, the operator may change his policy and may charge t
for missed calls if needed.
Interfaces for Charging:
Charging platforms support multiple interfaces to receive events. Some of the most common charging interfaces are on RADIUS and DIAMETE
Legacy systems used to charge calls on the IN (Intelligent Network) pre-paid platform. There were also Web Service interfaces used for charg
systems. Web services work on the HTTP protocol and are described by SOAP protocol (Simple Object Access Protocol).
2. Rate Determination and Rating.
The next logical step after receiving charging events is Rate Determination and Rating.
Once the charging system has received an event, rate calculation takes place for the customer depending upon the current tariff plan in use. Th
needs to decide the amount of units which need to be consumed for the particular charging event. For post-paid subscribers, these units are de
attached to a Call Detail Record (CDR). Then this
“rated-CDR” is dumped as a file.
For pre-paid subscribers, the units are determined and compared with the subscriber’s account balance. If the account balance is sufficient, the
borrows the required amount of units from the subscriber’s account and prepares to deduct them from the available balance.
Units may have different manifestations. For example, we can represent Units as “money”. We may also represent units in the form of the allow
download in Megabytes (units measured by volume). Another possibility is to measure units in terms of talk time. In some special cases, the op
represent units in terms of the number of free calls offered and the number of free SMS messages allowed.
Before the charging system rates a particular charging event and actually deducts units, there is an intermediary step. This step is to apply disc
applicable. For example, if the charging event cost the subscriber $1 and the tariff plan of the subscriber offered him with a discount of 50% on
rate applicable would only be 50 cents.
At this stage, it is important to understand the relationship between a tariff plan, the components of a tariff plan, offers attached with the tariff p
applied based on the offers, and the validity semantics of the offer. These are important inputs to the rating engine. The final rate to be applied
based on the tariff plan, offers and discounts applicable on the base plan and the validity of the offers.
The illustration below explains the relationship between these concepts:
The validity semantics of an offer has to be very flexible. This flexibility determines the business agility of an operator. In the figure above, certa
are shown. For example:
A particular offer may be valid at the top of each month. This is similar to the voice call free usage counters discussed in the example earlier
In some other scenarios, a certain offer may be valid only on certain days of the week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). For example all v
discounted 30% on certain days of the week (weekends for example).
Another option is for an offer to be applicable within a time band of a day. For example, the operator may offer discounted call rates at night
pm and 5 am) to encourage usage during these lean hours.
The fourth option shown above is for an offer to be applicable only on some special days such as Diwali, New Year, and Christmas etc.
The validity of an offer can also be confined to a closed user group. For example, all calls made between users belonging to a closed user g
cheaper as compared to the calls made outside the group.
Some offers are valid based on the destination of the called party. For example, there may be a special rate applied when calls are made be
and Chicago.
Usage based validity is a very interesting case. For example, when the usage of a particular customer crosses $30 in a given month, all subs
that month are offered at a discounted rate of 25%. This is a kind of a “reward” given to high ARPU customers.
The last option for validity is “unconditional”. This means that the offer in question will be valid at all times and for all calls.
3. Mediation:
The mediation process is the next logical step after rating. Once the rate is determined as explained in the previous section, it is applied to the C
this rated CDR file is pulled by the mediation engine. The mediation engine can handle CDRs from various sources – The MSC, the local office,
converts all these CDR files into a common file format. The file format is chosen so that it is understandable by the billing system. This file is the
billing system for post-processing.
4. Billing:
In the billing process, CDRs are provided by the Mediation engine to the billing system. The billing system processes these CDRs and reads the
this process is the generation of an itemized bill in human readable form by the billing system. As the CDRs which reach the billing system are a
billing system can calculate the final bill for a subscriber and the rate applied for each charging event.
The details of the CDR are presented in the form of a bill which can then be e-mailed or dispatched to the subscriber’s billing address.
These days, some advanced billing systems also provide a feature of billing level discounts. For example, if there is a high paying customer who
of over USD 100 every month for 6 months consecutively, the billing system can provide this customer with a discount of 10% on his next bill. Th
may even ask the rating engine to provide this high ARPU customer with a quota for free calls from next month onwards.
Wholesale/Interconnect Billing:
Wholesale billing applications include a variety of capabilities. Traditionally, this area included inter-carrier settlements capabilities and this was
interconnect billing applications. In today’s competitive markets and complex value chains, it has expanded further to include among others Roam
operators, and resellers, Mobile Virtual Network Operators, Content Providers and E-Commerce.
There is now an array of applications in the area providing charging, billing, and settlement capabilities on a raw data basis, individual transactio
basis across a variety of services and platforms. These applications work across a variety of platforms and support a wide range of services, p