Roaming Agreements, New Record Formats Offer New Challenges to the Wireless Community

New inter-carrier roaming and billing challenges will continue to arise as the number of wireless subscribers worldwide grows from 198 million this year to 529 million by 2002. The increasingly global scope of commerce is driving international roaming and subsequently many roaming and billing challenges, states George Shaginaw, president of Cibernet, who addressed an audience of wireless industry experts at the New World of Roaming conference sponsored by Cibernet in May 1998.

Changing Roaming Agreements

Presently, the basic elements of a roaming agreement include the parties involved, the services to be provisioned and the circumstances that could initiate a suspension or termination of service. The document often includes what charges will be rendered for services, how and what information will be exchanged between roaming partners and which methods will be used for fraud deterrence, billing, clearing and settlement. Roaming agreements were once simple documents, usually issued in clear language, but now they seem to take on a life of their own, says Karrie Worthy, SBC Wireless. Many are carefully written in complex-some say nebulous-language to ensure flexibility to the carriers involved, she says. Today, wireless carriers have more choices about whom they will partner with than they did in the early 1980s. In markets where only one or two wireless carriers once competed, five or six compete today. This new environment affords opportunities as well as challenges.

In the past, wireless carriers would roam with just about anyone that could exchange call records. All that mattered was getting national coverage, say several industry veterans. Now carriers can afford to be choosy and take advantage of what different carriers offer in a single region. Presently, AT&T Wireless tries to target roaming partners with similar network capabilities, says Karla Essig, AT&T Wireless Services. "Our data division is going crazy with customer requests for data functionality, so we look for partners who can support that," she says. Also, Essig tries to find partners who are able to 'hotline' our roaming customer back to AT&T Wireless' customer care center. Customer service calls, on average, cost about $6 to $7 each, she estimates. So, it's best to send the customer directly back to AT&T Wireless, which will have all the customer's data.

Today, wireless billing executives need to know a lot more than when the industry was in its infancy. "We need to understand different technologies and which ones are compatible with our network and equipment," says Worthy. The differing technologies place limitations on roaming between carriers. Billing systems are requiring a lot of "tweaking" as a result of the more complex roaming agreements. For instance, the accuracy of the billing identification number, which indicates to whom the bill should be sent, becomes of greater importance. In the past, customers who were traveling out of their local wireless carrier's serving area would call their carrier and let the customer service representative know exactly which dates they would be traveling and where. Most carriers would then manually exchange the dates of roaming and other information needed to bill the customer.

Expansion and Changes to the CIBER Call Record

Currently, the billing environment for roaming in the United States is based on the exchange of Cellular Intercarrier Billing Exchange Roamer records (CIBER), which are based on the industry standard for the transfer of roaming related billing information in batch form between roaming partners. CIBER is designed to accommodate circuit switched wireless communications services that are billed on a time increment basis. Presently, Cibernet in conjunction with industry representatives is working on the third release of the CIBER standard.

Some billing executives at a large U.S. clearinghouse are expressing frustration and exasperation with the many changes they must make to their systems to handle updates to and expansions of the CIBER record. Several carriers are failing to update their proprietary record format in their own billing systems to include changes made to CIBER, such as new fields and features for international roaming, says one billing vendor. Typically, there is a standard mapping process between a CIBER record (sent from a clearinghouse) and a wireless carrier's proprietary billing record.

A new wireless billing standard for roaming, the Non-Signaling Data Protocol for Billing and Settlement (NSDPB&S), co-developed by Cibernet and industry experts, is designed to facilitate the exchange of billing data near real time. Presently, billing records are exchanged in batch form once per month and follow an older set of guidelines. The new standard will expedite the exchange of billing information between carriers, clearinghouses, billing service bureaus and customers.

NSDPB&S grew out of a pre-existing wireless standard called the Cellular Radio Telecommunications Intersystem Non-Signaling Data communications standard, otherwise known as IS 124. "Back in 1993, a discussion began about how we could exchange call detail, rating and service information more efficiently," says Mary Clark, director of Operations, Cibernet. IS 124, a standard for the exchange of certain information in less than 15 seconds, was developed, but did not cover the exchange of billing information. So, Cibernet set out to establish extensions of 124. Building on the principles of the original standard, NSDPB&S outlines business applications for the newer billing platforms, so that information concerning service usage will be available from a call detail information source in near real time, says Clark.

"The new standard does what the CIBER does, but potentially quicker," says Clark. Instead of a collection of all of these CIBER records in batch form on the 15th of the month, the records will be forwarded on a continuous basis near real time.

The new standard will allow call detail records to be forwarded to call detail record generation points at a billing service bureau or a carrier's in-house billing system. The away-carriers' service bureau or billing system will create a rated usage message, which is, in turn, forwarded to the call detail collection point at the home carrier's billing vendor or in-house system. As a result, the home carrier's customer service representatives can then access this billing information for the wireless customers.

But it is up to each wireless carrier, billing vendor and service bureau to develop applications and change business processes to take advantage of the new standard, says Clark. Presently, there are no real time billing applications for roaming, she believes. Cibernet is forwarding the new standard to all its information technology vendors and wireless carriers in the hope that they will develop applications for it, says Clark. And some vendors are already working on these applications, according to several vendor sources. How many carriers are moving to near real time billing? Not many yet, according to some billing vendors. Partly because not enough vendors and carriers have implemented the changes, which can be expensive, to their systems to facilitate the new standard. "Carriers want everything, but they often do not want to or cannot pay for it," says one wireless billing vendor. But that doesn't stop many in the industry from talking about the new call record format designed to handle this type of billing, data message handler (DMH). Several sources believe that a carrier's ability to provide near real time billing when roaming will become a service differentiate. And, those carriers who can provide this service will pick up some very high-end, high usage customers, including, perhaps, some multinational corporate wireless accounts.

In the future, adding a country code as part of the intercarrier call record will be important for marketing and service differentiation as well, says one industry source. With country codes, a carrier can run reports on which of its customers roam in what parts of the world. Then, the carrier can target market segments to which they can sell appropriate international products and services.

Differing Record Types Internationally

A major complicating factor for wireless carriers, billing vendors and clearing houses is the increasing globalization of the industry. The reason? Different call record formats throughout the world require carriers, vendors and clearing houses to somehow read and reconcile data from all of them in order to exchange information for roaming,. In Europe alone, TAP I, TAP II and NAG TAP II are multiple versions of the standard interexchange record format created by the GSM MoU for European wireless carriers-the TAP. This is much like the various U.S. versions of CIBER-CIBER 1.0, CIBER 2.0 and CIBER 3.0. Each new version has expanded fields and sometimes additional fields that afford carriers additional information about customer usage.

Many billing personnel at clearinghouses cringe at the prospect of having to handle more record types, such as TAP II and III, as roaming between the United States and Europe becomes more frequent and as their customers continue to expect seamless service.

Clearinghouses: Increasing Number of Choices for Wireless Carriers

Until recently, Cibernet, reportedly the only independent facility in the United States for financial settlement between clearinghouses, dealt with only two clearing houses in the United States, EDS PC and GTE Telecommunications Services. Now, it is working to reconcile data from all four major U.S. telecom clearinghouses. Cibernet will be testing settlement with BSI Wireless and MACH U.S.A. later this year, says Clark.

In addition to these two newer clearinghouses, some billing vendors are exploring the option of performing clearing for some of their carrier customers in the future, according to sources at three different billing vendors. Some wireless carriers have asked their billing vendors to perform the clearing service. However, most carriers also want settlement included, which billing vendors cannot do-yet. In the future, vendors who can make the business case for doing so, will align their practices with the seemingly strict set of guidelines that Cibernet requires its participating clearinghouses to meet before taking them on as clients.

"Once the standards for participation in Cibernet are detailed and published, nothing really could stop billing vendors who are able to comply with those standards from getting into the clearinghouse business," says one vendor source, who has worked with wireless for more than 10 years.

Clearinghouses, perhaps because of the impending competition, are now offering data in differing formats, so their carrier customers can manipulate it to see trends and run reports for business forecasting and strategic planning, says EDS PC's Karen Majalian. EDS's clearinghouse now can do this through a client server front end PC, she says. Using query and analysis tools, a roaming partner can see trends and use data to which they formerly had only limited access, says one carrier.

Presently, carriers that do not use clearinghouses must come to an agreement on a number of issues, including price of service and may nevertheless end up manually invoicing one another, says a clearinghouse advocate.

Other new challenges to the wireless carriers include local number portability, new methods of fraud and Europe's currency change to the Euro. Look for articles in forthcoming issues of Billing World that explore these issues.

Editor's Note: Much of the information and several quotations for this article were gathered from presentations made at a Cibernet-sponsored conference in San Diego, Calif., in May 1998.

How CIBER exchange works

When a caller whose home carrier is Baltimore travels to New York, the carriers have a standard way to exchange billing and usage information. When the Baltimore carrier's customer makes a call in New York, a call detail record is produced. It goes from the nearest switch to the New York carrier's billing service bureau. The service bureau then takes the raw data and makes it conform to the "CIBER" standard. From the New York carrier's billing system or vendor, these CIBER records are forwarded to its clearinghouse, which checks each field in each record for compliance with the standard CIBER format. For example, the clearinghouse may have an internal check that shows a particular field can only be 1,2, 3,4 or 5. In the case of a 7, the clearinghouse will send the record back to the New York carrier's billing system or vendor, says Mary Clark, director of operations, Cibernet.

If the CIBER record complies with the internal checks, it is forwarded to the home carrier's clearinghouse, which will ask business questions, such as: "Is there a roaming agreement between these two carriers? Does this CIBER record show the correct rate, according to the carrier-to-carrier roaming agreement?" The record then is passed on to the home carrier's billing system or vendor.

When the billing cycle for roaming ends on the 15th of the month, clearinghouses reconcile their batches and mail activity reports to the carriers. The report contains the dollar amount that each carrier owes the other.

The same reports are mailed to Cibernet, which produces the settlement statements that declare how much each carrier owes its roaming partners collectively. At this point, the carrier pays this amount into its account at Cibernet. These transactions are handled for Cibernet by Chase Manhattan Bank.