Part of this is out of necessity. Mediation systems have to do a lot more than they did on circuit-switched networks. Where they once pulled data from a single source—the Class 5 switch—they now must pull call and event data from several network elements in the distributed IP environment. Softswitches, signaling gateways, session controllers—all store information that must be correlated and parsed for billing purposes and for other network management reasons, such as QoS data and even usage information by subscriber location or age group that the marketing department can use to create new product promotions. All that information, when properly inspected and sorted, can pinpoint areas on the network where revenue can "escape" and never be recaptured.
Where to Begin: The Lowly CDR
Mediation systems can be used to provide complete end-to-end data integrity checks—not just at the point of event recording—to ensure that the network performs accurate and error-free billing and revenue collection.
From the point of collection, the mediation system owns money, in the shape and form of CDRs and other billable events. "The longer it takes the mediation to hand off such billable data to downstream applications for billing and invoicing, the larger the impact is on the operator's revenues and cash flow," says Udi Keidar, chief of Amdocs' Network Products Unit.
The CDR provides lots of opportunity for spotting revenue problems. "A wide variety of errors can be encountered while applying business rules on the CDRs," Keidar says, "including CDR file integrity. The record attributes are often misaligned with the agreed-upon interface contract. Not only that, but records may not conform to the expected definitions, or record attribute [fields] may contain values that are wrong or out of range."
Transmission failures and faulty switch behavior also can result in gaps or duplications, in the file sequence number as well as record sequences. "The mediation system must be able to detect all errors and suspend the relevant data processing before the problem multiplies."
After sanitizing the records, Keidar says, the system can report further exceptions as it tries to look up additional data to augment the original CDR. This step is referred to as "reference data access"—an integral part of mediation processing. Outdated reference data can result in look-up errors and hence the need to suspend the looked-up record. The problem is aggravated in the IP world, where the reference data are dynamic and constantly refreshed.
Operators expect mediation systems to work record and file-level errors quickly and efficiently for fast recovery. That process includes:
1. Identifying erroneous data
2. Isolating such data and generating an alert about it
3. Inspecting and correcting whatever data can be corrected
4. Recycling the ratified exceptions back for re-processing
"Even with robust error management systems in place," Keidar says, "service providers face severe risks of revenue leakage—for example, when the call duration reported is shorter than the actual time between the call setup and call teardown performed by the network." Keidar says mediation functionality can be expanded so CDRs can be compared to signaling information for more robust problem solving. The signaling network (SS7) is the authoritative information source that describes the real "cost" of the call—from the exact allocated time of the communication channel through its release time. Advanced mediation products compare, in near real time, the signaling messages with the information provided by the network through billing CDRs.
"Any discrepancy between the two information sources can be rendered as revenue leakage," Keidar says, "and proper off-line steps can be taken to analyze and remedy the problem, usually through better switch configurations."
Service providers should build or buy a system having unified monitoring and control, auditing and error management to ensure an accurate flow of information from the network to the billing system with zero revenue leakage, Keidar says.
Mobile Operators Bleeding Even More Than Wireline Wireless operators that provide data services will need systems that can handle more complex revenue leakage possibilities.
In fact, industry surveys show that a lot of money is being lost out there, especially in wireless data networks. The facts indicate that wireless operators had better pay more attention to their revenue assurance practices, if they hope to stem the flow of revenue fleeing their networks. So says a telecom analysis firm that recently polled 100 wireline carriers and wireless operators that sell voice and data services. The report, "Global Operator Attitudes to Revenue Assurance—Survey 2004," found that mobile operators are losing "significantly more" revenue than wireline carriers.
The survey, conducted on behalf of Azure Systems by the Analysys research firm, indicated that carriers lose an average of 10.7 percent of their total revenue. When the numbers were examined by service provider type, "the average mobile operator loses more revenue (11.7 percent) than the average fixed-line operator," Azure reported. Interestingly, about 30 percent of service providers say they hire outside revenue assurance vendors; 65 percent do the work in-house.
According to Analysys, the top causes of revenue leakage are:
- Fraud by other carriers (more than 20 percent of the total lost revenue)
- Fraud originating within the company (crooked employees) and from exterior sources, such as customers who don't notify the carrier when the carrier fails to bill them
- An inability to align and manage interconnect billing procedures, which includes the inability to determine who's terminating calls on the network—an industry-wide problem
- Poor systems integration, which hinders collection of all the records and reports for an event needed for billing and customer care
- Improper provisioning of new products, which includes improper billing rates, failure to turn on circuits and failure to turn off circuits once the customer or service is finished • Lastly, improper handling of credit cards and other billing platforms.
As wireless voice and data providers can tell you, having the right mediation system is vital to managing the revenue chain. For instance, identifying end-users, processing events accurately, verifying content delivery and on-target billing are the building blocks for accurate division of revenue along the revenue chain. Any missteps result in a loss of money, and usually it's the service provider that gets stuck with the loss. The content provider gets paid by the service provider—it's not the content provider's fault that the item didn't get recorded.
As an example of the level at which mediation systems can operate, Dan Baker, research director of OSS/BSS KnowlegeBase at Dittberner Associates points to SK Telecom, a wireless provider in South Korea with 18 million subscribers. SK, the country's largest 3G wireless carrier, launches and retires 5,000 individual mobile content events a day, Baker says, from ring tones to video clips, photo images, text messaging, Java-enabled games and even TV broadcasts on the handset. SK has to manage hundreds upon hundreds of different content providers, all selling their IP-goods at various rates, including discounts, promotional rates and changing prices based on time of day and holiday and weekend rates.
It's not easy to do, Baker says. "You have to provision the services, let the network know what's coming; then you've got to track the usage for them [content providers], manage all that 3G browsing," he explains. "SK depends on high-powered mediation systems to manage all the IP networks, voice networks and all the content coming in—plus they have to manage the settlements and the revenue chain. The mediation is the key to all of this. If you don't have a robust mediation system, all these fancy things won't happen."
Poor service correlation is another common problem that bleeds revenue. Remember to multiply each problem by 2 million or 3 million subscribers to get an idea of how quickly revenue can disappear.
"You need to double-check your event records to make sure that the content being delivered to a single subscriber isn't being recorded twice and billed twice to the subscriber's account," Baker says. Double event counting occurs because the content and event information goes over two network platforms, CDMA and GPRS. The service provider has to make sure it correlates the two sets of records so it emerges as a single billable event, not two.
"When the service provider sends an MMS file through, an MP3 or video clip, it doesn't always go through the first time," Baker says. "But the second attempt to send it is recorded as a billable event, as was the first attempt. You end up with a double bill for the same event again."
Fighting Customer Frustration With Wi-Fi Mediation Systems
Betty Cockrell, director of industry relations at Billing Concepts, says her company built a product based on its mediation system's functionality called "Ez-Wi." The wireless telecom roaming and settlements system is designed for revenue loss prevention on Wi-Fi networks. "The roaming software sits between Wi-Fi providers; their data services rely on mediation's ability to gather data correctly to maintain profits," Cockrell says. "Wi-Fi roaming partners rely on the mediation system to record events accurately, because they rely on that data for accurate settlement—so both parties receive what they're due."
The Billing Concepts system searches the event records looking for anomalies.
"As the Wi-Fi traffic is recorded between the Wi-Fi providers, we pull those records off into our fraud control systems, into our rating system and on downstream to billing and customer care systems," Cockrell says. Mediation lets Billing Concepts' service provider customers catch problems with service before the subscriber logs off, she says.
"We have to have the ability to immediately help the customer who's calling and complaining. To do that, we quickly grab some of the data coming off the switch and, through mediation, pull it in to customer care so someone can do troubleshooting and come up with a diagnosis for the customer," Cockrell says. "Wi-Fi problems are going to occur at the time the customer tries to gain access to the system or while he's in the middle of doing something. You have to see the events before the customer is logged off."
Revenue Assurance Before Billing Is Affected
Billing Concepts' system is not about offering credits and discounts to assuage angry subscribers; its revenue assurance efforts are concentrated upstream from the billing system, before the carrier has to admit failure and take charges off the subscriber's bill.
"In roaming you've got to maintain a high level of quality assurance on the network," Cockrell says. "You want to be able to troubleshoot, whether it's on your roaming partner's handoffs or at the hotspot where end-users are trying to access services."
Roaming agreements have to be monitored constantly and correlated with actual network performance. "You have to see the activity in real time to make sure you're meeting QoS guidelines," she says.
Cockrell points to other possible revenue assurance approaches:
• Monitoring for fraud. "Fraud is another big money taker," she says. "We use our mediation system to spot fraud through something called 'velocity checking.' If the 'subscriber' is logging on from two different parts of the country simultaneously, that's a hint that's something's wrong. If we see John Doe subscriber logging on at a hotspot in a Texas city at 10 a.m. and then logs on again at a hotspot in New York City an hour later, we have a situation where people are sharing their user IDs, probably with a friend." The mediation system can perform distance checking to determine that it's impossible for the user to be in those two places and automatically warn the service provider that something's up. "It sends an alert to our Wi-Fi service provider customer, and they can then deny that user access."
• Preventing spoofing. "Because our roaming software sits in the middle of the network, we're catching the transactions and 'proxying' out between the providers, so spoofing won't happen. The system keeps a record of each transaction and prevents the creation of extra sessions that really didn't occur." Accurate session time-out indicators prevent carriers from charging roaming partners—accidentally or otherwise—for sessions that didn't happen.
• Mediation reporting = revenue opportunities. "An online Web tracking system creates reports based on type of activity, level of usage, based on subscriber type, Wi-Fi hotspot location and session level," Cockrell says. "One can drill down to the raw usage and can combine reports, and give service providers a view from many angles." Service providers should produce activity reports by individual hotspot location so they can see which ones are creating the most activity and, on the flip side, notice when certain hot-spots begin to generate less revenue. That could indicate that a network problem—perhaps low QoS preventing successful downloads—may be hurting the bottom line.
Revenue Assurance Includes End-to-End 'Participation'
For some, mediation is but a single piece of the revenue assurance model; true revenue assurance involves every element of the billing and OSS architecture during all steps of the operation, from beginning to end.
"Revenue assurance is a huge topic—there is no one such thing as a single revenue assurance tool," says Rick Woods, CEO of Intec.
Intec recently published a white paper on revenue assurance techniques laying out several questions network managers can pose to locate revenue leakage. Here are three of those points, which can involve data from the mediation systems and center on activation and deactivation:
- Revenue assurance begins at service activation. Is the right service being activated for the right end-user within an acceptable timeframe?
- Are services being deactivated as needed, based on defined parameters?
- How does the subscriber status in the network compare with the subscriber profile in the billing system?
Chris Couch, chief marketing officer for Ace-Comm in Bethesda, Md., says consideration of where revenue leakage could occur should begin "when the carrier starts to build the network." It's hard to argue against that. There are so many ways to configure a network that it's more than easy to put the mediation and other data-collection elements in the wrong place. What's certain is that the mediation system can be crucial for protecting the bottom line.
"Ace-Comm thinks there are two sides to revenue assurance: the CDR side, or usage side, and the other focus should be on the overall health of the network. Is your network configured properly? Are you recovering and reusing assets properly? Are the services provisioned quickly, and is the billing matching on the other side? Ninety-nine percent of the time when you talk about revenue assurance is about ‘switch to bill to cash' considerations."
Regardless of where one believes revenue assurance practices should begin, the mediation system is the place where all the bets can pay off. It's where one can plug leaks or collect data to analyze for better profit.
