Billing World Standards Watch Wireless Industry Association Pushes for Caller-Pays Standard

Another new standard for billing wireless calls is hot off the press and hitting the desks at several standards-making bodies. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) has submitted its "Service Description for Calling Party Pays" document to committees within the Association for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) that deal with intersystem operations, call detail and billing record exchange, interconnection, signaling protocol and CIBER record format.

"Billing probably will be the biggest point of contention [within the industry when further developing this standard], because it comes down to the almighty dollar," says Brad Blanken, manager, network operations, CTIA. Right now, calling party pays arrangements have a lot of leakage, he says. That is, many calls cannot be billed. So, carriers would theoretically lose a lot of revenue implementing a calling party pays service before the technological bugs are worked out thoroughly.

As it is now, "if a customer calls from a pay phone, college dormitory or prison, the particular calling party cannot be billed," he says. Blanken and CTIA hope that the T1 committees will work out these bugs and come to a consensus within the industry on how these calls can be billed. The document is asking the originating entities to make technological changes to their networks and billing systems that will identify where the call is coming from and whether it can be billed for, explains Blanken.

The new standard could be a significant change in the way incoming calls to wireless phones are billed in the United States, because wireless customers have had to pay for calls they receive as well as those they place since 1983, according to industry experts. Calling party pays is already the norm in many European countries.

The standard was drafted by representatives of approximately 35 carriers and vendors during several industry association meetings in 1997. The 23-page document addresses billing as one of its major topics, as well as other issues including caller notification of charges, roaming, settlements and call blocking. The standard lays out how a call could be billed from a wireline phone, a wireless unit, a hotel phone, a pay phone and a prepaid card.

In general, the standard would allow carriers to charge calls at one or more fixed rates that reflect time of day, terminating carrier, a subscriber's rate plan or a subscriber's location. A requisite for such a standard would be the sharing of billing information between "all telecommunications carriers," both wireline and wireless, to identify the originating call detail.

Billing Scenarios

Wireline Callers: If a wireline customer calls a wireless customer, the wireline customer would be asked to accept the charges. If the wireline customer does accept the charges, billing information would be generated. Then this billing information would be forwarded to the wireless carrier's clearinghouse, which in turn would send it on to the wireline carrier's billing system. The wireline customer would then be billed for the call as part of the monthly statement. For wireless customers calling other wireless customers, the billing process is almost exactly the same as for wireline callers.

Customers Calling from a Hotel: The inability of a wireless carrier to bill these kinds of calls quickly enough to the originating customer makes this scenario a complicated one. "Automatic billing cannot be provided because the wireless carrier has no way to influence the hotel's PBX or access the hotel carrier's billing system,'' according to the document.

Calls from a Pay phone: Under the new standard, a customer calling from a pay phone would be asked for a credit card to complete a call to a wireless customer. "Automatic billing also is not an option [in this scenario], because the carrier cannot access pay phone coin-collection algorithms," according to the document.

Calls Using a Prepaid Phone Card: This type of call to a wireless customer would be routed first to the prepaid phone card company's billing system, where more billing information could be gathered. The call then would be sent to the originating carrier, then the caller would be asked if he or she wants to pay the extra charges for connecting the call. If the customer agrees to pay, the call goes though and does not appear on any phone bill, but is charged directly to the caller's prepaid account.

Potential Stumbling Blocks

Several stumbling blocks may hinder the new standard from being ratified by industry standards-making bodies anytime soon. For one thing, setting up a system that could notify customers calling a wireless customer would be extremely challenging, says one industry expert. One solution proposed in the standard would be to set up a system that would connect the caller to a tone followed by a message explaining that there would be an extra charge to complete this type of call.

Even this proposed solution, however, is fraught with difficulties, since-even if the caller refuses to pay the extra charges and the call is not complete-access charges could automatically be billed to the caller and his or her carrier. The caller may still be billed by a long distance carrier and in some cases the wireless customer's local carrier. The long distance carrier and the wireless carrier would charge the caller for the time he or she was connected to the wireless customer's switch, which is providing the voice response unit. (In this case, the switch would interpret the call as completed.) Number portability and one number for one customer-whether for a wireless phone, wireline phone or business location-would further complicate billing. In this scenario, callers may not know whether they are calling a wireless phone or landline.

"Who will be responsible for the billing is one of the key issues," says Blanken. "It may be that the LEC can provide a billing alternative, especially if the LEC controls local pay phones, hotel/motel phones and prepaid systems," according to a CTIA document. But, the LEC and the wireless carriers would have to negotiate several issues before this alternative could be set up, including access charges. Most likely, modifications to signaling protocols and call-detail record exchange formats would be needed before LECs could bill for such a service.