Billing Q&A with Jim O'Neill

Q-I am fairly new to telecommunications and get confused about all the various record types that are floating around. Can you decode all the acronyms and explain how these records are used?

A-I can highlight the main ones that are touched by billing at one point or the other in their processing. I'll also try to provide some background and tell you who maintains them and how you can find more details on those you use.

This response will be restricted to North American Standards (or initiatives). However, some of these records are used in other parts of the world as well. All major industry segments-traditional landline, wireless and the new emerging IP networks in North America-use some records unique to their needs.

Let's start with traditional landline (circuit-switched) networks. This segment has been with us for over 100 years now, and it has had a lot of time to evolve standards that are useful for all landline companies. Before the Bell System broke up in the early 1980s, more than 20 big local companies and the single long-distance company all operated under common ownership (AT&T). These companies really dominated the business and basically set the standards for themselves and the independent companies around the country.

After divestiture in 1984, maintenance of many of the standards was handed over to Bellcore. At that time Bellcore was a subsidiary of the seven regional Bell companies. In 1997 it was acquired by SAIC, an employee-owned company whose stock is not publicly traded; and in 1999 its name was changed to Telcordia Technologies. The company's standards were made available by subscription.

The major record maintained by Telcordia is the BAF record, or Billing Automatic Message Accounting Format. This record format is used throughout the United States for CDRs (call detail records) generated by landline switches to capture usage data. There are both traditional batch formats of the BAF record and newer near-real-timeversions under development. The formats can be obtained from Telcordia on-line by visiting www.telcordia.com.

Once records leave a switch and pass to mediation or message processing systems, they may change to the internal format used by the carrier's billing system. At this point, some usage records will be identified as having to be billed by another company. For example, local exchange carriers handle and record requests for collect calls. These records have to be passed to the home carrier that is going to bill them. Another example is the records rated by long-distance companies but passed to a local company to be billed on behalf of the long-distance company. These records use EMI (Exchange Message Interface) formats. Sometimes you may hear these records referred to as "outcollects" (when being sent) and "incollects" (when being received). Various subrecords within the EMI standard are maintained by the Order and Billing Forum of ATIS. Subscriptions to the standard may be obtained at www.atis.org via an on-line store at the site.

The third record commonly used by both landline and wireless carriers is the CARE, or Customer Account Record Exchange format. This record contains account rather than usage information. It will be generated by a local exchange company whenever a subscriber selects a long-distance company. The LEC will use the CARE record to inform the long-distance company of the subscriber's name, address, phone number and other required information so it can establish an account record and determine how it will bill the subscriber for long-distance calls. CARE records may also be generated at a long-distance company when the subscriber elects to make a change through the long-distance company. The CARE record is also maintained by the Order and Billing Forum.

The wireless industry does not have a single standard for usage records generated by its network switches. Rather wireless carriers use the formats defined by the manufacturers of the switches they select. As with landline, these formats are typically reformatted into an internal billing system standard when they are processed.

Wireless carriers in equal access markets also use CARE records to exchange account information with long-distance companies chosen by their subscribers.

Roamer message exchange between carriers uses the CIBER (Cellular Intercarrier Billing Exchange Roamer) record format. (At divestiture in 1984, wireless companies owned by regional Bell operating companies were enjoined from using any of the landline standards, so the industry adopted its own standards.) The CIBER record also has a number of subrecord formats developed over time to facilitate message exchange between carriers. The CIBER format is maintained by committees managed by CIBERNET, a subsidiary of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA). The committees comprise representatives of carriers, billing companies, clearinghouses and system integrators that provide services to the wireless industry.

Most carriers use the services of clearinghouses to edit and forward CIBER records to the home companies for billing. The main wireless clearinghouses in North America are BellSouth International, EDS, GTE-TSI and MACH. Some North American wireless carriers use GSM digital technology and permit roamers from Europe and other locations to roam on their networks. When this occurs, the CIBER records have to be converted (typically at a clearinghouse) from CIBER to TAP, the Transferred Account Procedure format used by European GSM carriers.

The wireless industry has an additional format for passing usage information between carriers on signaling networks. Commonly referred to as DMH, or Data Message Handler, this format constructs records in packet data format. The packet format requirements are contained in IS-124, a standard approved by the Telephone Industry Association (TIA). The business rules for passing usage between carriers are contained in another CIBERNET standard, NSDPx, or Non-Signaling Data Protocol. The appended "x" can also be "F" for fraud formats (data passed directly from switches to fraud platforms to detect illegal activity in a near-real-time environment), or "B/S" for billing/settlement formats (data passed from switches to both home and roam carriers for billing each other).

Links to additional information on CIBERNET may be found at www.wow-com.com. Additional information on TAP formats may be obtained by contacting infocentre@gsm.org.

The final part of this answer involves the emerging Internet Protocol world. As the Internet and telecommunications have continued to merge and become mutually dependent, it became obvious to industry leaders that it would be necessary to establish new ways to not only measure usage, but to identify such things as who received a service, where and how it was obtained, who benefits, who gets billed, and so forth. This led to the formation of an organization called IPDR.org. This group, with more than 150 member companies worldwide, is defining the Internet Protocol Detail Record to meet these challenges. While still under development, it holds the promise of changing forever how companies exchange information in the future. Additional information may be found at www.ipdr.org.