Welcome to Billing World & OSS Today's online newsletter.
--- Advertisement. This issue of the newsletter is sponsored by: ---
Low-cost operations: A high priority for operators seeking growth In order to maintain their market position and continue to grow in the face of severe competitive pressure, operators must consider three key growth areas while controlling costs. Find out what they are and how they can help your organization succeed.
Pre-/Post-Pay Convergence Fuels Integration of IT and IN Systems
By Susana Schwartz
Because subscribers want instant access to multimedia services with the power to choose the service, the device, and the payment method, carriers are racing to eliminate antiquated segmentation of customers according to payment methods.
A single view of customers and accounts is necessary to enable multiple people under the same account to access the same services, quality and performance in both pre- and post-pay modes.
That need is driving operators to evaluate the long-term viability of their IT-oriented and network-oriented platforms. (Also see April’s Billing World & OSS Today feature, “Pre- and Post-Pay Wait for a Convergent Architecture.”)
“Billing is a big mess for operators because of the continuing trend to focus totally on the network while neglecting forethought on how to provision orders, resolve trouble tickets and bill for services,” contends John Trembley, Oracle’s director of business development.
He concedes that the market downturn forced companies to focus on their network buildouts, but the fact that 80 percent of carrier focus remains on the network while only 20 percent goes to functions running on top of that network is somewhat troubling.
According to Trembley, that ratio has to change—otherwise, carriers will have to rely heavily on systems integrators, equipment suppliers, and ERP, CRM and billing vendors to squeeze performance out of existing systems.
Because IT-oriented systems lack real-time session control, and IN-oriented solutions lack flexibility and proficiency in managing complex hierarchies of accounts, the convergence of pre- and post-pay depends on vendors’ long-term strategies.
Interim efforts to bolt together pre-pay and post-pay capabilities could lead to a lack of integration among databases and rating engines, which could spell disaster as carriers move to massive product rollouts, service changes, discounts, promotions or upgrades.
Where carriers currently offer scores or even hundreds of services with fairly long life cycles, the future may see thousands of products rolled out every year with a lifecycle of only weeks, days, or even hours.
It’s doubtful that IT-oriented vendors would ever want to muck around with networks, and most IN players acknowledge they wouldn’t have the time to gain the expertise for complex customer-facing capabilities.
Consequently, there have been substantial “preintegration” efforts to foster a best-of-breed approach to convergent pre- and post-pay strategies.
A Closer Look
Many functions must come together to aggregate usage data and facilitate rating and billing for IP services. Mediation, pre-mediation, provisioning, rating, pre-billing and billing are just a few.
Few companies possess all components, but some have made acquisitions and partnerships to get closer to the goal of an end-to-end solution.
For example, Oracle possesses CRM and ERP, as well as AR functions that manage post-billing processes around customers. The company’s E-Business suite includes CRM, ERP, supply chain management and procurement.
Recently Oracle announced a slew of preintegration initiatives intended to foster convergence of BSS and network.
For example, its announcements with Portal and Alcatel indicate Oracle is connecting its E-Business suite to IN nodes—the benefit of which is access to real-time rating engines possessing in-memory-based databases. Those databases will act as a single repository for customer data, thus enabling synchronization between relational databases and databases existing on discs or application clusters.
Oracle will integrate mission-critical characteristics of RAC (Real Application Clusters) and its customer-facing capabilities with various IN and post-pay billing functions.
With Alcatel’s Open Service Platform, Oracle gains a partner that brings network-related facilities to the table, including access types, network provisioning, session supervision, online/offline mediation, and a real-time rating engine and billing aggregation product. Thus far, Oracle has incorporated Alcatel’s real-time rating engine into its billing workflows, thus enabling its E-Business suite to capture billing and CRM data so that rating, charging and billing cycle management are accomplished through Alcatel. In addition, discounting, promotions and tariffs are to be supported by Oracle.
Oracle also has partnered with Convergys and Intec to preintegrate business processes among CRM business flows and billing flows, as well as synch up product and customer catalogs.
Convergys in its own right has also been very involved in pre-/post-pay convergence. It will license bcgi’s real-time billing product, which enables network-based pre-paid and hybrid mobile services. In addition, Convergys has partnered with Siemens AG. The latter sought out a BSS partner that would engender hybrid capabilities in its charge@once IN platform.
Siemens, Convergys and Telkomsel—the largest cellular network in Indonesia—decided to collaborate and have since embedded the Infinys system into Siemens IN platform.
“We wanted the ability to share the database and accounting/charging mechanisms with BSS,” says Siemens’ Kai Michaelis, senior director for strategy and communications. “We knew we’d have to join forces with the billing world, as operators in large pre-pay markets can’t afford to wait a few years while network companies figure out rating.”
He noticed that, more and more, operators needed help defining which components would require real-time handling. “They’d hear from their billers that balance management could happen offline, but that makes it impossible to invoke charging or rating rules as events happen,” says Michaelis.
While real-time SS7 connectivity at the front end was sufficient for simple tariffing, calling card services, 800 look-ups and caller ID functions, there now is a need for rating engines—not just balance management modules that constantly updated subscriber balances.
“Billing was fast, but not real-time. Now, you want rating and charging rules to respond to subscriber behavior so you can change rates or tariffs instantly, as the situation dictates,” says Michaelis. “If a customer in Europe all of a sudden calls Colombia multiple times a week because he met someone during a vacation, you want to offer a promotion or discount on Latin American calls while he’s engaged in a call. If you wait to put the promotion on a bill after the fact, he’s less likely to participate in new service offerings.”
Those types of real-time possibilities are galvanizing other partnerships as well. For example, Highdeal’s Transactive rating engine has been embedded in Ericsson’s MMS-C and Nokia’s OSC; LHS in Germany has worked with Ericsson and HP to support pre-pay applications; Formula Telecom has done implementations in conjunction with Comverse; and Lucent’s is preintegrating its IMS solution with Intec and Openet.
Comverse has since embarked on becoming a “full life cycle management” company, as it aims to offer customer care, billing and financial services to its customers. With its Kenan assets, the company plans to “flatten the traditional OSS/BSS stack,” according to Kurt Silverman, CTO of Comverse’s converged billing solutions. “We have significant R&D going into defining pre- and post-pay infrastructure, because our customers across mobile, wired, TV, Internet and emerging IP TV networks want one vendor and solution set for order entry, order management, network access, authorization, financial controls, billing and payment processing.”
With approximately 330 million subscribers under management in 250 deployments, Comverse wants to be the comprehensive integrated suite. “Any infrastructure sewn together with string will become fragile years later. Tier 1s that have to be efficient, or small IT shops that have to remain nimble, have to eliminate integrations and go with vendors focusing R&D on end-to-end solutions,” says Silverman.
Whether the one-stop-shop or best-of-breed approach prevails will depend heavily on each carrier’s roadmap for the future. Greenfield companies and Tier 3s will take different approaches than Tier 1s or Tier 2s, as will companies in emerging markets versus established ones.
The ultimate strategy for pre-/post-pay convergence will depend on existing systems and relationships with IN vendors in charge of call control, and those with applications and business-oriented systems.
Complimentary Billing & OSS World 2006 Exhibit Hall Pass
As an email subscriber, TeleStrategies would like to offer you a complimentary exhibit hall pass for this year's Billing & OSS World show at the Miami Beach Convention Center. This is a $150 value! May 3rd and 4th.
To subscribe to Billing World and OSS Today print magazine Click Here
To subscribe to this e-Newsletter use the form on our homepage: BillingWorld.com
To unsubscribe to this e-Newsletter click here and type "Please Take Me off" in the subject box.
Telecom Egypt Selects Convergys Convergys announced that Telecom Egypt, the largest fixed line provider in the Middle East and Africa with over 10.5 million subscribers has signed a 5-year licensing contract for Convergys' Infinys rating and billing solution. Convergys will manage the replacement of Telecom Egypt's twelve existing billing systems by providing project management, business requirement analysis, solution definition, configuration, installation, testing, and data migration services. The consolidation project will be completed in 2008. The first Infinys-generated bill is expected during the second quarter of 2007.
bcgi Enters License Agreement with Convergys bcgi announced it has signed a multi-year software license agreement with Convergys. Under the terms of the agreement, Convergys will license bcgi’s Real-Time Billing, which enables network-based prepaid and hybrid mobile service; Payment Manager, which enables operators to broaden payment channels and reduce the complexity and cost of managing multiple payment partners; and Mobile Guardian, which provides operators with an end-to-end solution for blocking unwanted, unauthorized and harmful content and contacts from mobile phones. This channel partnership is expected to leverage the combined distribution power of the two companies.
Cramer Releases Cramer6 OSS Suite Cramer recently launched the Cramer6 OSS Suite. The new product is a complete, end-to-end fulfillment suite for any service on any network, specifically targeting next-generation network and service environments. The product provides a two-way interface between the BSS and the OSS, allows product managers to accelerate the creation of new services and by automating feasibility checking and technology selection, and it accelerates service fulfillment. Cramer6 OSS Suite addresses the challenging task of high-volume, flow-through activation and supports new media-based services and associated content. The product provides an abstract view of services and resources at all levels, including network, IT and content components. In addition, the product provides a capacity view of the aforementioned resources, as well as automation of critical business processes across the converged network. Because it is a multi-service OSS, legacy and next-generation services can co-exist on the same platform. Thus far, Cramer has signed on TDC, a communications provider in Demark, for the ActivationEngine product within the Cramer6 suite.
Telepacific Extends Contract with OSG OSG Billing Services announced a three-year agreement to continue managing invoice presentment and distribution services for TelePacific Communications, a California-based service provider serving the business market. The company currently uses the OSG View product, a customer service tool that allows the CSR to view an exact replica of the invoice, offering instant customer feedback to resolve billing issues. In addition, TelePacific has added the OSG Dynamic Messaging feature to its invoice, which will allow the company to communicate better with customers and generate additional revenue through targeted marketing programs. The company claims to have a 93 percent resolution rate on the first call for all calls into customer care.
UDP Aligns with MasterCard RPPS UDP has launched a new payment offering called E-POST, which provides service providers with an automated electronic receivables service. UDP partnered with MasterCard RPPS for the offering. The latter distributes secure payments to the largest number of electronic payment receivers in the industry. The network serves as a central hub capable of processing tens of millions of electronic payments every month for service providers.
E-POST is designed to increase back-office efficiencies and eliminates the need to manage multiple payment originator relationships. Payment information is received via a batch/lockbox file and a daily ACH credit is deposited in the service provider’s bank. E-POST only distributes reliable funds because the bill payment service does not initiate payment if funds are not available.
BT Deploys MetaSolv’s Provisioning 5 MetaSolv Software announced that BT is implementing MetaSolv’s Provisioning 5 to enable IP service delivery. MetaSolv’s Provisioning 5 will facilitate the automated provisioning of BT’s MPLS-based IP-VPN services and network elements as part of BT’s Vserve initiative. BT is replacing a legacy order management system with Provisioning 5 to manage the entire provisioning process for provider edge and customer edge routers, MPLS IP-VPN services, and QoS. The product ialready is deployed at BT to manage a number of services and technologies.
Nauticom Upgrades to Portal 7 Portal Software announced that Nauticom Internet Services, a Northeastern regional provider of Internet services for residential and commercial customers, is upgrading to Portal 7. Nauticom, a division of North Pittsburgh Systems, provides dial-up, DSL and dedicated broadband connectivity, hosting, co-location, and Web development and design services. Nauticom, a Portal customer since 2000, is moving to Portal 7 for its Customer Center, Advanced Discounting and Web Self Care features.
AXTEL Extends Agreement with Comptel Mexican-based AXTEL has selected Comptel’s automated activation and provisioning solution for its new pre-WiMAX network. AXTEL, a competitive local exchange carrier, will use the solution to support its offering of integrated local, long distance, Internet and value-added services. AXTEL currently uses the Comptel’s automated provisioning solution and convergent mediation solution.
