Rating Engine

The Role of Rating Engine

The role of the rating engine is to apply pricing rules to a given transaction, and route to the rated transaction to the appropriate billing/settlement system.

Rating steps:

(1)Determine
a.Connection date & time
b.Duration
c.Rate period for discounts

i.Time of day (TOD)
ii.Day of week (DOW), holidays
d.Rating increments
i.1, 6, 10, 30, 60 second increments
ii.Per packet, per byte
e.Jurisdiction
i.Regional, National, International
ii.May be used for rating, settlement, tax
(2)Rate table look-up using
a.Event date
b.Event type
c.Optionally
i.Rate table ID
ii.Rate period
iii.Jurisdiction
(3)Calculate event charge
(4)Calculate tax (optional)
(5)Store relevant information on the xDR

Steps to rate a call

(1)Determine charge points

a.Originating charge point
i.“A” number from the CDR (May be the originating cell site address)
ii.Originating charge point = country code + city code + exchange

b.Terminating charge point
i.“B” number from the CDR (May be the terminating cell site address)
ii.Terminating charge point = country code + city code + exchange

(2)Retrieve place names

a.Table: Charge point place names
b.Originating & terminating
c.Store on CDR

(3)Determine band
a.Fixed or Mobile
b.Terminating country
c.Terminating network
d.First 5 minutes etc

(4)Rate table look up using

a.Rate Table ID (optional)
i.Assuming rates specific to rate plans
b.Call date
c.Call type
d.Band
e.Rate period (optional)
i.May be a flat discount percentage applied

(5)Rate table look up may return

a.Flat price per event
b.Rate per increment
c.Rate per increment + discounts

Billing Process

Definition:Network data management (i.e., mediation) and rating are the key OSS elements that support the billing process.


Purpose of a Billing System:

•Meter and bill the services consumed by the customer
•Allow definition of different rates for services
•Allow easy management of customer accounts
•Maintain record of payments received

Billing Functionality:

Billing is more than just a means of collecting money. In a marketplace fueled by competition, Carriers are recognizing billing as a strategic weapon in the battle for new and retained business.

Various types of telecom billing includes

Wireless Billing
Convergent Billing
Interconnect Billing
IP Billing

Critical Billing requirements include

•Flexible rating capability for new services
•Multi-mode processing : real time, hot or batch
•Multi-party settlement capability
•Service convergent
•Unified accounting: postpay/ prepay/ nowpay
•Adaptability and ease of use
•Multi-territory and multi-role capabilities
•Carrier- grade performance
–Functional
–Scalable
–Useable
–Available

Key definitions

•Account: Any customer is represented in the billing system as an account. One account can have only one customer

•Plan: A plan is a bundle of services associated with the account

•Service / Product: Different billing vendors have different definitions for service…. check out the definition for specific package

•Billing cycle: A periodic cycle for which the customer is billed. E.g. from the 4th of a month to the 3rd of the next month. Can be weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly

•Accounting cycle: A cycle for which the charges against an account are calculated (not billed)…typically monthly.

•Recurring Charge (RC): A predetermined charge associated with a product or service that is assessed on a regular interval i.e., monthly, quarterly, annually

Mediation Systems:

The role of mediation systems is to capture usage information from the network and service infrastructure, and distribute it to upstream billing, settlement, marketing and other BSSs.

Mediation processes the Call Detail Record (CDR), call, message, usage, traffic, ticket, event, xDR

Usage types can be

•Fixed to Fixed
•Fixed to Mobile
•Mobile to Fixed
•Mobile to Mobile
•Roaming
•Value Added Services (SMS, Call Forward, etc.)

Key activities in Mediation – Usage collection

•Polling / Data Collection
•Consolidator across network elements
•Standardize inputs to Biller
•Support for real time applications
•Drop non-billable usage
•Reformat, validate, number translations
•Direct usage between applications
•Insulate the biller from Network elements

The validation functions in mediation includes:

•Duplicate checks
•Drop calls
•Perform edits and translations
•Creating message legs
•Table look up and conversion (CLLI -> country code, city code, exchange)
•Assign a unique tag number to the event

order management, provisioning and inventory players in market

OSS product vendors
•ADC (provisioning: wireline, cable)
•AI Metrics (order management, inventory and provisioning: wireline, next-gen, enterprise)
•Co-Manage (inventory, provisioning: data - ATM/FR/DSL/SONET/IP/IP-VPN) Cramer (provisioning, inventory, order management: mobile, voice, data)
•Eftia OSS Solutions (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, CLEC)
•Granite (provisioning and inventory: wireline, mobile, enterprise)
•Metasolv (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, wireless, data, isp)
•NetCracker (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, next-gen, data)
•Peregrine Systems (inventory management: wireline, next-gen)
•Sigma Systems (provisioning: cable)
•Telecordia: (order management, provisioning, inventory, dispatch: RBOC wireline)
•Visionael (inventory management: next-gen)

Others
•In-house developers
•ILEC/CLEC provisioning gateways (DSET, Nightfire, Quintessant, Wisor)
•Billing services vendors: Amdocs, Convergys, CSG, Infodirections
•Custom solutions (consultants/integrators)
•Legacy systems

Role of Business Support System

Business support systems (BSS) are the components that a telephone operator or telco uses to run its business operations towards customer. BSS and OSS platforms are linked in the need to support various end to end services. Each area has its own data and service responsibilities.

Role of business support systems:

The role of business support systems in a service provider is to cover four main areas:

Product management
Customer management
Revenue management
Order management

Product management:
Product management supports product development, the sales and management of products, offers and bundles to businesses and mass-market customers. Product management regularly includes offering cross-product discounts, appropriate pricing and customer loyalty programmes.

Customer management:
Service providers require a single view of the customer and regularly need to support complex hierarchies across customer-facing applications (customer relationship management). Customer management also covers requirements for partner management and 24x7 web-based customer self-service. Customer management can also be thought of a full-fledge customer relationship management systems implemented to help customer care agents handle the customers in a better and informed manner.

Revenue management:
Revenue management is a BSS focus on billing, charging and settlement, that can handle any combination of OSS services, products and offers. BSS revenue management supports OSS order provisioning and often partner settlement.

Order management:
Order management as a beginning of assurance is normally associated with Operational Support Systems though Business Support Systems are often the business driver for fulfillment management and order provisioning.

BSS : Business Support System

The business support systems (BSS) domain encompasses the systems designed to support business processes including billing, CRM, marketing/sales support, partner management, and more.

It Handles business operations and is customer centric, done by operations team and they report to operations officers.

Customer Care and Billing — masters account, invoicing, payment processing, taxes, bill calc, rating, discounts, cycles (if any), adjustments, ERP interface, recurring charges, credit management.

Customer relationship management (CRM) — masters customer record, product catalog, order entry, contract, trouble management, SLA violations, service order, order status.

Sales force automation (SFA) — manage the sales process, product configuration, eligibility, custom contract negotiation, RFI/RFP processes, SLA negotiation, upsell

Decision support (DSS) — market analysis tools, pricing analysis, data warehouse

Fraud management-

Revenue Mangement-

Partner Relationship Managemnet-

Collection-

E Commerce-

Enterprise Information Portal -