Wireless

July 15, 2005
Real-time mobile billing: Glue between legacy and next-gen systems

Nils Granath

SWITZERLAND -- The mobile phone industry is undergoing a transformation as new applications and services are increasingly being rolled out. The current billing infrastructure, based on intelligent network (IN) solutions and billing systems, must evolve to meet the challenges of converged prepaid and post-paid billing for any combination of voice and data services. The confusion surrounding the cost of data calls forms a major barrier in the uptake of MMS and GPRS usage. This will be a thing of the past, as consumers will be given an accurate, real time price for any imminent download or surfing activity, even when traveling abroad. Revenue leakage resulting from the uncertainty of MMS message arrival will also be history alongside the current divide in customer service between prepaid and post-paid customers.

Active mediation
Active mediation is a growing area that mediates in real-time between the respective billing solutions -- prepaid or post-paid. Positioned between the networks and charging systems, active mediation integrates the service delivery infrastructure with the charging systems for real time exchange of control and charging information.

Active mediation systems control calls, sessions and events in real-time for prepaid and post-paid subscribers. They interface directly into the core network using standardised protocols such as customised application for enhanced mobile logic (CAMEL) for real-time voice call control and diameter for IP traffic charging. Active mediation uses the subscriber's balance, package information, account status and other attributes such as age and language. This information is retrieved from real-time rating and account management modules that sit close-by in the mediation domain.

Online charging systems
Online 'live' charging systems (OCS) form the main part of active mediation. OCS is an international standardised set of active mediation products for real-time control of all chargeable events in the GSM/SPRS/UMTS network. As well as adhering to the 3GPP standards, it offers an adaptable open interface to network elements for rollout of real-time control with legacy billing systems.

OCS offers a richer experience for the subscriber. For example, it can redirect Web-surfers to a top-up page if they try to access a service for which they do not have enough credit, or facilitating the presentation of messages in a subscriber's first language. OCS uses a convergent billing system between prepaid and post-paid systems, thus bridging the customer service divide and facilitating unified services with common ratings for all subscribers.

With IN, operators are often tied to a single vendor offering a closed system that sometimes will not even reveal an account balance to other mediation components. By offering a modular set of open components, OCS helps to break this restriction freeing up the operator to use generic billing systems.

Operator benefits
OCS addresses the billing pains of operators today. Three of the main drivers for convergent billing are unified customer service, revenue leakage and fraud prevention. OCS enables a complete up-to-date view of the subscriber, which allows for better customer relationship management (CRM) and self-care as customers are always presented with an accurate view of their account profile and mobile phone activity.

Revenue leakage is currently a major issue for mobile phone operators as there are so many systems involved in sending an MMS message. In order to bill for an MMS message, the operator needs to be certain that the message has successfully reached the target, which may belong to a third party network. Using OCS, the subscriber will know in advance how much it will cost to send the MMS message, while the operator will know in real time that it has been received and it instantly appears on the subscriber's account.

Fraud is limited and minimised by controlling the amount of activity allowed for all subscribers. Because it works in real time, OCS can be used to spot trends in usage and alert the operator to unusual behaviour. This control also means that operators can instantly implement short-term special offers to subscribers on specific services - half price MP3 downloads for the next hour for example. Most importantly, real time charging can stimulate the uptake of data services from market segments that until now have been reluctant due to uncertainty over the cost.

Subscriber benefits
The main benefit to the subscriber is the transparency of charging. With contracts offering various price plans which offer different prices depending on the type of call, the time of day and the location, it is often confusing for the subscriber who may prefer not to use multimedia services in fear of a large bill. By providing real-time price information, the user can find out the cost in advance of a download or during surfing. This is particularly useful to business phone users when abroad, as the charges can be presented in over 200 currencies and converted to the currency of the home billing system.

Other benefits to businesses are that operators will start to charge lower fees for certain data services. Access to a company intranet, for example, could be charged at a lower rate than commercial Web sites, e-mails could be charged at lower rates during peak hours. Family plans will become more prevalent and more useful as parents with post-paid accounts can credit their children's post-paid accounts. Also, because it is a unified billing system, post-paid customers can use top-up vouchers to pay bills, providing more flexibility in payment methods.

Real-time billing to reduce fraud, MMS revenue leakage
Success in the GPRS and UMTS market will depend on the variety and attractiveness of mobile data services that an operator can provide and not a single killer application - operators will race one another to offer the latest services. The competitive edge will hinge upon the ability to roll out these services quickly and to adapt pricing structures on-the-fly, without confusing the consumer. OCS will enable this to happen. It will also be unified between prepaid and post-paid subscribers so that everyone can benefit from the latest services and equal customer care. The benefits of cost transparency will lower the fear factor for mass consumers while real-time billing will help to reduce fraud and MMS revenue leakage. OCS introduction is imminent and its implementation will be a refreshing change for all mobile phone users and operators alike.

(The author is director, product management, Sicap)