But as operators work to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they will need a more advanced form of mediation that will allow them to gather customer data from disparate systems, compile it in one place and quickly analyze it (See The Evolution of Mediation).
More Demands on Mediation
This advanced type of mediation can help operators get more value from their existing network and business support systems, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, communication between the mediation system and rating engine will become increasingly important as operators offer more revenue-generating content. Services such as video-on-demand and voice over IP (VoIP) might produce usage records that need to be rated and re-rated, and mediation will need to track and send these records to the appropriate entities such as billing, content providers and payment partners.
Intelligent information management introduces the concept of the OSS “hub,” where mediation is not just responsible for collecting usage data but also becomes a key component in the OSS architecture, through which all transactions are managed in any direction. In the hub architecture, mediation becomes a real-time transaction processor.
Operators can use intelligent information management to predict churn probabilities, interpret customer usage patterns, assess product portfolio performance and determine the potential of new service packages while reducing fraud, planning their capacity and analyzing traffic. Ultimately, operator benefits include true convergence, rapid time to market, enhanced revenue assurance capabilities, improved fraud management and reduction and better customer retention.
Carriers typically don’t need to make too many adjustments in their networks to handle intelligent information management. The capability needs to be handled in a network-adjacent system such as mediation. Most mediation solutions provide interface capabilities with networks but do not offer the breadth of capability needed for intelligent information management.
Intelligent information management requires systems to have granular audit capabilities as well as the ability to intelligently manage usage. This includes multi-processing of a single event in varying ways. For example, an event generated on the network might need to be sent to multiple downstream systems for different purposes, such as retail billing, settlement, revenue sharing and reporting. It also requires revenue assurance to be inherent in the mediation system, allowing an operator to verify that the complex processing reflects revenue generation.
The information is collected in a variety of ways through multiple protocols including FTP, SSH/Secure File Transfer Protocol (a secure method of doing FTP transfers), RADIUS and socket-based communications.
Depending on the architecture, the mediation software can sit on a centralized server or be distributed throughout the network. By utilizing remote data agents, for example, the collection portion of the mediation process can be located at the network element itself while the mediation processes are centralized.
Data is processed and separated based on configurable business parameters. This is where the intelligence comes in. A system must be capable of taking a set of network data and determining which parts of it are pertinent to which applications. The rules must be configurable and applicable in real time without requiring system downtime and without compromising auditing and revenue assurance.
Carriers Face Increased Complexity
A number of new challenges are pushing operators to implement this advanced form of mediation.
First, convergent operators are increasingly dependent upon an expanding virtual community of partner companies comprised of both service delivery and content providers. This new “revenue web” requires robust management by the operator of the expanded community. For example, wireless operators initially focused only on tracking data to enable roaming for the traditional voice network. The standard business practice for roaming was built upon batch-oriented, post-event billing and was not done in real time. Today, operators are trying to manage third-party partnerships that go beyond voice to also include content delivery and commercial goods transactions. This results in more data to manage and is further complicated by a shift from post-event billing to real-time commerce transactions. As a result, these convergent operators will need to manage three things: communication, content and commerce.
These factors significantly complicate the role of mediation within the overall systems architecture. Mediation has become more than just a simple one-way flow of information between two companies. Instead, it requires a multi-party, multi-directional information exchange to support complex transactions and revenue sharing arrangements. This new revenue web is a valuable asset for operators. Mediation now becomes the pivotal element for establishing a positive return on investment from this new community of content suppliers.
How does it work? One example involves the need for operators to offer wireless subscribers a choice of payment options, either postpaid or prepaid. As operators look to offer innovative and bundled service offerings based on content, commerce and communication, their subscribers will want to more actively manage their own spending patterns. Service packages will include elements that are unfamiliar to users, such as charging for content sessions based on the amount of data being delivered. Subscribers might want prepaid payment options to reduce the uncertain nature of the expense associated with these new services.
Further, users might want more flexibility so they can choose, for example, traditional postpaid plans for voice calls and prepaid for an online mobile gaming service. Operators that offer a bundle of highly targeted services with these payment options will improve subscriber retention in a highly competitive market and reduce churn. But multiple software systems must be integrated in order for operators to offer convergent prepaid services to their target markets.
To activate convergent prepaid and postpaid systems, an operator must use the mediation layer to manage the real-time bidirectional messages between the IN platform (for authorization and event control requests and responses) and the rating and billing systems, in addition to all of the functions of traditional postpaid mediation.
Consider an example: Cable operators can offer VoIP services that enable them to compete with traditional telephony operators, making use of their existing cable data network to offer high-bandwidth data delivery. The bidirectional transfer of IP traffic over the cable system occurs between the cable modem at the customer premises and the cable modem termination system at the head-end.
In today’s environment, the record-keeping server (RKS) is responsible for storing and assembling the event messages from the various network elements and passing them to downstream OSSs such as rating and fraud detection systems. Similar to a mediation system as we know it today, the RKS must correlate all of the event messages relating to a single call prior to passing them to the downstream system. An advanced mediation management system acts as an RKS to provide cable operators with a lower total cost of ownership, or it interfaces with an existing RKS to support next-generation services such as VoIP.
Another challenge for operators is that today’s telecommunications networks consist of multiple elements associated with multiple OSSs, such as mediation, rating and billing. These “smokestacks” developed either due to corporate mergers and acquisitions or because IP-based networks grew in parallel to existing voice networks. The proliferation of these specialized systems per each smokestack has resulted in a lack of auditability, high risk of revenue leakage and high costs.
Consolidating these disparate smokestack OSSs is a major financial opportunity for operators, not only to
cut costs but also to enhance revenue assurance. Migrating toward a single, real-time OSS creates an environment with a central point for enhanced functional and operational management and centrally managed software and systems upgrade and maintenance. A highly scalable, convergent mediation function plays a critical part in this consolidation process.
Marquita Martin is director of product management at Convergys. She is responsible for product strategy for the wireless market and was previously responsible for product management for Convergys Mediation Manager. She has worked in the communications industry since 1990 and has developed expertise in several areas, including mediation, revenue assurance, and roamer processing and settlement. She can be reached at Marquita.Martin@convergys.com.
Legacy Mediation: Designed for single network service Legacy Mediation: Simple interfacing relationship Legacy Mediation: Collects data; Mediation=interfacing Legacy Mediation: Passive post-event batch output Legacy Mediation: Stable service environment with defined standards Legacy Mediation: Simple revenue assurance Legacy Mediation: Single format output |
