Convergent Charging A Look Into The Concept

Basic Information

The concept of convergent charging is applicable mostly in the telecom industry. According to the definition, it is an integration of service charges onto a single customer invoice. It also provides a unified view of the customer. Under the convergent billing format, the customer may seek diversified services from a single operator. It may include fixed voice, data, broadband, postpaid, or even the prepaid option. Under this system, the customer receives a single bill and makes a single payment for all these services he/she gets to enjoy. The perfect convergent billing must be able to add any number of products and services into a single bill.

More About Convergent ChargingThere are plenty of advantages for operators looking to provide

such services to its cliental. It is a single product and a single service catalogue. Hence, it definitely presents a better opportunity to market the product and reduce the cost of implementation. The operator can provide centralized customer service for both post paid as well as prepaid options. The system is equally beneficial for customers.  A unified bill allows cross service discounts. Hence, customers who order multiple connections can enjoy the benefits of preferential pricing. This format of billing also allows existing customers to add additional services as and when they need. While all this sounds fine but there are a few bottlenecks in the whole system.  The major deficiency is that, there is no billing system, which can bring both post paid as well as prepaid services in a single bill. Then real time charging systems are Ericsson N or Nokia Siemens is perfect to provide solutions to prepaid systems. However, they are unable to handle the various complexities associated with post-paid services such as customer hierarchies, CDR ratings, volume discounts and a host of other issues related to a post paid service. Now convergent billing can get a bit difficult if there are plenty of customers. Hence, to have a perfect system, one can look forward to the concept of OSS systems.

Detailed View on the Same

Also referred to as operations support systems, this is computer system used by telecommunication service providers. It focuses on network systems dealing with the telecom network its self. It is a supporting process, which maintains network inventory, provisioning services, configuring network components and managing faults. It was somewhere in 1970 that the OSS system saw the light of the day. However, in those days, it was manually. Slowly the computer system took over the reins. The system concentrates on process, data, applications and technology.

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