Billing final.pptx

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Billing

Transcript of Billing final.pptx

Billing

Telecom Billing

Telecom Billing :

Collecting usage, aggregating it, applying required charges

Receiving and recording payments from the customers

Rental Charges Usage Charges 

Customer life Cycle

Event & CDR

Event: An event is a single billable occurrence of product usage, typically captured electronically by a network. 

CDR: An event along with all its attributes is called Call Detail Record (CDR).

A data collector in the network switch captures the usage in the form of Call Detail Record (CDR)/Usage Detail Record (UDRs)

Raw CDRs/UDRs are in turn converted by the mediation system into a format understandable by the Billing System.

Billing Process

Network Elements

There could be different network elements controlling the services and producing different types of CDRs

Voice calls are captured by the MSC (Mobile Switching Centre). SMS traffic is captured by the SMSC. Data traffic is captured by the GGSN(Gateway GPRS Support

Node) MMS traffic is captured by the MMSC. Roaming CDRs are captured by roaming partner's switching

element.

CDR Attributes

CDR keeps usage details along with various other useful information. Below are the most important attributes of a CDR:

Calling Party (A number) . Called Party (B number). Call Start (date and time). How long the call was (duration). Call Type (Voice, SMS, Data etc). A unique sequence number identifying the record.

Rating Process

Rate is the charge/price for the occurrence of an event. Rating is the process of determining the charge/price of individual

events. Rating Engine, which is part of the Billing system, carries out this

rating function.

Basic Functions of Rating Engine

Accepting CDRs Validating CDRs Event Guiding Calculating cost as per tariff plan Rating time discounts Store Rated Events

Discounts

Rating Time Discounts: All the discounts given at the time of rating process

Billing Time Discounts: All the discounts given at the time of billing process

Bill Process

Billing Engine picks up an account due to generate a billing and following associated information to generate invoice data:

Rated CDRs All types of charges Refunds Outstanding amount Discounts offered Applicable taxes Payments received from customer

Bill Cycles

When a customer is added into the Billing System, system assigns the customer a predefined Bill Cycle. A bill cycle is a date on which Billing Engine runs and produces bills for a set of customers.

Nominal Bill date Actual Bill date Final Invoice Generation: Billing Engine generates raw data Internal/External bill formatter generates final invoices Bill Print Companies prints the final invoices