Are Softswitches Ready for Billing’s Hard Tasks?

The softswitch industry isn’t building its future on billing, but some developers are paying closer attention to the details than others.

Asking a softswitch maker about billing draws a gamut of responses. Some softswitch providers can’t be bothered to discuss billing functions and capabilities. They are intent on proving that the switch has five-nines reliability and can scale to meet a service provider’s needs. For this contingent, billing seems to take care of itself—a mysterious process that occurs after they have delivered their switch. Billing, as these folks see it, is something handled by the carrier and the billing provider.

Other softswitch makers are eager to talk about the hows and whys of billing and have built an architecture that accounts for the demands of billing.

Experience is the defining characteristic that sets the two groups apart. Providers that have operational softswitches in the network realize billing’s importance. “The whole point of a softswitch is to make it easier for carriers to offer new services. If a carrier can’t bill for those services easily, we, as an industry, won’t be able to move the technology forward,” says Bruce Trvalik, director of management products at Sonus Networks. “If softswitch maker isn’t considering billing, they are missing the point.”

Distinguishing Characteristics

Designed to ease service creation and lower operation costs, the softswitch is slowly being deployed in carriers’ network infrastructure. Typically, carriers are using them for wholesale applications, replacing Class 4 switches to offload Internet traffic and terminate traffic. Currently, the softswitches rarely carry revenue-generating services, but they are being rolled out as alternatives for Class 5 switches slowly.

Softswitch providers believe that next-generation networks, although a way off, will use softswitches as the foundation to support diverse new services. However, billing for these new services poses a problem. Since providers are unsure what these services will be, they are unable to predict the type of data or format that will be required for the CDRs. To offset this unknown territory, they pad their product descriptions with talk of “built-in flexibility that allows us to easily handle any request.”

Most requests are for AMA (automatic message accounting) formats, and the softswitch makers are relying on standard BAFs (billing AMA formats) from Telcordia. Most don’t provide all the subsets, but they have tried to compile the most common and flexible ones. “It’s ridiculous to go out of the gate and do hundreds of different formats, as well as proprietary formats,” says Stefan Knight, director of product marketing at CopperCom. “We picked the most common formats, and we try to be as flexible as possible to do whatever the customer throws at us.”

The softswitch providers say they can produce any of the hundreds of BAFs currently in use among proprietary and nonproprietary systems. Keep in mind that they don’t say they have produced these records. Getting previously unrequested formats from a softswitch maker will require some development time.

Because the billing market is so fragmented, softswitch makers realize that no two customers have the same requirements. In some cases the billing mediation platform will filter out the unnecessary data. Other billing systems have specific formats transferred to them from the switch. Sometime the data is ASCII, other times it is binary. And every customer needs customized CDRs due to the particular service it is offering or the billing system in place.

“We have to work with billing systems that were developed in-house, designed by a startup, or are part of the legacy environment,” says Ellen Sun, director of product management, billing and mediation at Convergent Networks. “Carriers usually need changes to the AMA mapping format, or they may ask for certain fields that aren’t in the CDRs. We have decided to do that work in-house, because depending on external partners to do the work is often challenging.”

Convergent recently purchased OpenCon, a billing mediation provider. After licensing the mediation software and using it within a customer’s environment to support Class 4 tandem and offload applications, Convergent bought the software and the development staff. The mediation purchase will support Convergent’s move toward Class 5 features, which the company is now testing in customer field trials.

“As we begin to support Class 5 features, we wanted a way to show our customers we had addressed billing concerns,” says Ben Holzemer, vice president of business development at Convergent. “OpenCon had the scale and reliability we were looking for, and we could incorporate it into our product less expensively than continuing to license it.”

Other softswitch makers look for third parties to provide customization. “Most carriers have the billing companies integrate the products and customize the CDRs. We can do that work, but billing providers typically have professional services that make that happen,” says CopperCom’s Knight.

Tekelec looks for partners in the industry to ensure billing compatibility. “We make recommendations to our customers and look to companies such as Narus, OpenCon and Linguateq to provide the mediation piece,” says Rob Ennis, director of packet telephony marketing at Tekelec.

When Global Crossing added Sonus gateways and softswitches into its voice over IP network, it customized the CDR internally. “We massaged the CDR format, so we could drop it into our mediation layer,” says John Chapman, senior director of VoIP Services at Global Crossing. “We had to create a service identifier, but it was less of an issue than we thought.”

Partners and in-house staff are key to integrating the billing system and switch, and customizing the CDR format. But the softswitch makers recognize that carriers want some degree of self-sufficiency for changing the format. Having heard carrier complaints about traditional providers’ slow response times for change requests, the softswitch developers are making adjustments. They are adding interfaces to the switches that allow carriers to reconfigure the CDRs and make minor changes, such as removing, adding or reordering fields.

“We allow users to change how they map the output, and modify the output’s appearance without impacting the network,” says Convergent’s Holzemer.

These changes are typically made to raw ASCII streams coming from the switches. In smaller carrier environments, as well as in international networks, carriers may not want to use BAF.

“Proprietary binary formats make it difficult to load the CDR,” says Sonus’ Trvalik. “Since everyone knows how to deal with ASCII, we produce a raw stream from the switch. Customers can then write an interface that moves the records to the billing system.”

By the end of the year, Lucent will be adding a graphical user interface that will allow customers to change the CDR format. “The customer can select and modify the fields they want to appear in the CDR using whatever delimiters they want and in any order they need,” says John Scaldaferri, product manager for softswitch OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning at Lucent). “They can create up to five different subsets that can be passed to the billing system, order management system or another back-end system.”

Lucent is also adding a capability that will uniquely identify calls in the softswitch and gateway. “We will put a universal tag in switch messages to the gateway,” says Scaldaferri. “The gateways will generate call event data with the unique call identity that will have the same identity as the softswitch records. The tag can be used to show relationships, and the events can be correlated for fraud detection, traffic management or other back-end functions.”

Storage Space

CDR storage is another area in which the softswitch makers have diverse opinions. Some developers keep the records on the switch for a specified time. In this scenario, the billing system or mediation platform, depending on the infrastructure’s complexity, will poll the switch at predetermined intervals and request a record transfer.

The records are transmitted via FTP, or in one case NFS, from the switch to the mediation or billing system. The records can be stored anywhere from hours to days, depending on the switch’s configuration. According to the developers, storing the records on the switch doesn’t decrease the switch’s processing power.

“Most call processing is done in the CPU and memory,” says CopperCom’s Knight. “The CDRs aren’t that large, so they don’t require much space. And retrieving the files has a minimal effect on the switch.”

Other softswitch providers have created a separate central repository for CDRs. This repository is not only used for billing, but also for other back-end systems such as traffic management, performance monitoring and fraud detection. Defending this architecture, the companies claim it improves softswitch performance. Long-term, they expect to dispense with the need for generic BAF formats.

“A central repository makes the softswitch more efficient. It doesn’t slow down real-time elements, and it shields the billing and mediation vendors from call processing mechanics,” says Paul Singh, co-founder and vice president of business development at ipVerse. “Carriers don’t have to add software or put probes throughout the network.”

Life After Wholesale Applications

Many carriers are choosing softswitches to decrease cost and space requirements. The carriers like the fact that the softswitches don’t take up huge amounts of space in their facilities and that they are easier to manage and support than traditional switches. These softswitches may not provide all the functions of previous switches, but by the same token they don’t present steep learning curves for their personnel.

Carriers are easing the softswitches into their network environments and making sure they pass performance and reliability tests before turning them over to customer-facing services. “When you give someone dial tone, you have obligations to do 911, equal access, wiretap issues and billing implications that can be very complicated,” says John Barnicle, chief operating officer at Focal. “We are using Convergent softswitches to handle terminating traffic because it’s easier than acting as a full-featured Class 5 switch. We wanted to make our project as manageable as possible and get familiar with the softswitches first.”

Global Crossing has a similar plan. “We are looking at softswitches to add some Class 5 feature functionality, but our top priority is handling Class 4 calls. Later, we will lay features and services on top of the softswitch,” says Chapman.

Not only will softswitches need to prepare for richer CDRs generated by Class 5-type features, but the switches will also need to consider quality of service and real-time rating for next-generation services. “New services will ramp up the call rate. The softswitch may provide data for QoS, mediation and customer relationship management. As calls get more complex, they may need real-time rating, which could be built into the softswitch or the billing system,” says Peter Green, vice president of customer care and billing at Telcordia.

Uncertain Future

Softswitches are evolving, slowly. The developers are struggling to fill their carrier customers’ requirements in what appears to be single-use situations. With no standards and limited real-world network experience, the softswitch companies are bending to customer demands and hoping to apply their development work in future network scenarios.

While billing may not be center stage for softswitch makers, they are keeping a close eye on media gateway protocols, such as MEGACO (Media Gateway Control), MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). These protocols are vying for market leadership, but regardless of the outcome of the protocol battles, billing systems should not be affected.

“The softswitch has a segmented architecture that is not co-dependent,” says Tekelec’s Ennis. “The billing system needs information from the switch, but it doesn’t rely on MGCP, SIP or MEGACO.”

“The billing application is shielded from the media gateways and should not be dependent on the gateway at all,” agrees Singh of ipVerse.

While the softswitch companies keep close tabs on the gateway protocols, they are also staying abreast of activity on IPDR (Internet Protocol Detail Record) and OSP (Open Settlements Protocol). “The Bellcore formats are rich, but they are difficult to work with when a customer dreams up a new product offering,” says Sonus’ Trvalik. “IPDR and OSP are trying to build specifications that make it easier to extend CDRs. We’re looking to these groups to find the magic that suits the old world and the new.”

Even Telcordia recognizes the growing support for IPDR. “There is a general move to IPDR, but customers will make the final decision. We can deal with AMA records, and we will accommodate IPDRs. We won’t push a single format,” says Telcordia’s Green.

Formats and protocols are just a few of the unknowns facing the softswitch industry. The immature technology has few firm answers, and the companies are addressing what they see as the biggest problems first. A major stumbling block that has hindered softswitches’ adoption rate is interoperability. Carriers are finding that softswitches can transfer traffic to softswitches from the same manufacturer but not to those from another manufacturer.

“You have to make a new technology work first, then you hit the peripheral problems,” says Tekelec’s Ennis. “Those peripheral problems may be important, but they are secondary. Right now we need to concentrate on making the gateways work with the different protocols.”

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Softswitch Quick Poll

Before softswitches take a prominent role in next-generation networks, they are being tested with wholesale applications. These early experiences are forcing the developers to be more cognizant about billing—or to find partners who can fulfill billing needs.

Convergent Networks will leverage its purchase of OpenCon’s BMP (billing mediation platform) by tightly integrating the software with its Cohesion product family. The BMP integration will be especially applicable when Convergent begins offering Class 5 features later this year in its second release. Current Convergent customers, such as Focal, are using its softswitch for Internet offload and traffic termination applications. Other customers include ACD.net, Global NAP, and TelNet Worldwide. Through these integration efforts, Convergent has experience with interfaces from Daleen, Saville and proprietary, in-house billing systems.

Having begun life as a voice over DSL provider, CopperCom moved into the softswitch arena through its purchase of DTI. The company counts Ntegrity, Community Telephone, Dixie-Net Communications and PriorityOne among its customers. The CLECs and DLECs are using the switch to offer integrated voice and data services to residential customers, small businesses and multi-dweller units. CopperCom switches have been integrated with Daleen and Geneva billing systems.

IpVerse has included an event collector in the architecture of it ControlSwitch that can be used for billing as well as other back-office systems, such as fraud and traffic management. The company has relationships with Mind CTI and Portal in the billing space, and it relies on AP Engines and Xacct in the mediation space. Announced customers include NTT Comware, Illuminet, Electric Light Wave and Telocity.

Lucent offers a suite of billing and mediation packages to accompany its softswitch. While more familiar with ArborBP and BillDats, Lucent also has experience with Amdocs. The softswitch has been especially popular in Asia and Europe as a toll tandem and to support H.323 or SIP-end client services.

Nuera is focused on its new SIP gateway. It has experience with prepaid and postpaid customers, but it would rather talk about SIP than billing.

Qwest, XO Communications, Times Warner Telecom, Williams Communications and Global Crossing are a few of Sonus Networks’ announced customers using the softswitch for Internet offload. Sonus says it has more experience interfacing with proprietary in-house billing systems than with commercial platforms, and has used AP Engines and Xacct’s billing mediation platforms.

Tekelec admits to having limited experience interfacing with billing systems. One softswitch customer interfaces with AT&T, but the billing is handled by the AT&T switches. Going forward, Tekelec expects that Linguatec and Narus will help filter the appropriate CDR information to its customers’ billing systems.

When it comes to integrating with legacy systems, Telcordia claims it leads the market. Customers such as Sprint are offering Class 5 services over DSL using the softswitch; CT Communications is also offering Class 5 services supported by an Internet access device and PBX; and Videotron is using the softswitch for cable services. In addition to experience with proprietary systems, Telcordia has integrated with Daleen, Saville and Kenan.

The newest of the players, Westwave is separating itself from the pack by placing its open access architecture at the network edge. The company supports a new network element, an access switch that transfers services through the local access network. Westwave intends to impact unbundling services at the central office, but it is still waiting for the product to hit the market. With products in test labs now, the company expects to have software available by the end of this year.