Not many technology sectors within an industry can support more than 60 vendors, but that’s how many Stratecast Partners profiled in its new global billing report released this week that focuses on rating and charging and other core billing aspects.
Even though the top nine billing solutions providers command 81 percent of the market, even small percentages of a market that stands at $6.7 billion today is a healthy revenue base. Karl Whitelock, senior consulting analyst for OSS BSS Global Competitive Strategies at Stratecast, calls it a very healthy market. He expects the overall billing market to grow at 4.4 percent through 2013 and the rating and charging segment to grow even faster.
Convergent rating and charging is leading the growth because life-changing services, especially in the mobile space, are prompting vendors to develop new solutions that can handle both network-based services and those newer services that are not network based. For years, Whitelock said, network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) would build intelligent network-based prepaid capabilities right into their equipment. “But as you move into the convergent world where not every service is network based, such as content that comes from the outside to play along with the network layer, you can’t do it all from inside the network,” he said. “That’s why companies like Ericsson went out and bought LHS.
“LHS gives them the functionality to process transactions from an IT perspective. They can receive transactions from all kinds of sources, not like a mediation engine. And that’s what’s really important . We think that’s the future,” Whitelock said, adding that Nokia Siemens Networks saw that future and built a system of its own.
NEMs aren’t the first provider you think of when you’re thinking of billing; however, within the top four rating and charging suppliers by revenue, Amdocs is the only non-NEM. The other three in alphabetical order are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. Those four hold 61 percent of the market. Beyond that, the next five show the opposite. Huawei is the only NEM among Comverse, Convergys, CSG Systems and Oracle. They command a 19 percent market share.
