Was Billing Better Off On Its Own?

Billing used to be like the lead singer of a rock band who stood in front of a group of nameless musicians and got all of the glory. Now, to some, it seems like the drummer who you can’t see behind all of those cymbals.

As Tony Poulos writes for Telecom TV, “most of those [billing] specialists have metamorphosed into multi-stream BSS vendors and billing is now part of the broader BSS (Business Support Systems) world.”

Conferences focused mainly on billing used to draw big numbers back in the 1990s, but those numbers dwindled after the tech bubble burst in 2001. Take this week’s BSS conference in Amsterdam, which drew a much smaller crowd.

Just a few years ago, Poulos argues, a BSS/OSS pairing would have been “undesirable, if not impossible.” But billing itself will remain a critical piece of the customer experience because of all of the calls it generates to customer care centers and the money it makes as well.

Service providers are being forced to develop new ways to do their billing. One possibility discussed in Amsterdam is a shift to handling all customer charges in real time, like with prepaid. This would help customers control their spending and build a certain trust. Electronic billing statements sent directly to a customer’s handset with a simple payment option, already common in some places, should be the way of the future, many at the conference argued.