Convergent Billing and other supporting use cases –A whitepaper

Proliferation of next generation converged digital services, increased competition from linear and

nonlinear players like OTT providers, higher expectation from customers on seamless experience in

terms of service and support; all these are driving operators to look for convergent business and

operations support solutions capable of providing tools which could manage the new convergent digital

service delivery chain.

Introduction

Last decade had witnessed telecommunication, media and entertainment industry growing into a new

dimension, where service and delivery models became more or less digital and IP oriented. IMS and OTT

technologies are further driving digitization into a new convergent world. At the same time Operators are

having a tough time to keep up with customer’s expectation for an end to end experience across products

offered, ordered, consumed and monetized. Operators are also realizing the importance of partnership

with OTT providers and content aggregators who at the moment are riding on top of operator network by

offering innovative value added services to the operators own customer . However this is adversely

affecting operator revenue by creating a scenario where operator itself is getting downgrade to a position

similar to a dump pipe carrying all value and still not able to make return out of that.

Today’s Telecom, broadband and other careers are facing these challenges irrespective of tiers and

geographies , and most of them are aware of the agility required in their strategy, systems and approach

to manage it. Industry analysts, Forums, integrators and ISV are helping operators to address these

concerns and foremost of their plan is to have the convergent business and operations support system

implemented. The key use cases behind such an initiative is that , it will enable operator to become more

agile with their offerings, transparent in their interface towards customers , ensure real time bit wise

monetization of services, open up towards partners and above all, will provide centralized view on

customers and their relationships , usage and revenue patterns .

It is a fact; Tier One CSP and large MSO are increasingly embracing new convergent billing and charging

platforms to address these challenges. The primary objective of such a solution is to have a central

system capable of addressing the catalog, charging and billing function across different industries –

Retail, Business; Service streams – data, voice and video; Payment models – pre, post and hybrid.

Convergent Billing- Major Use cases

The major convergent functions which operators often consider for evaluation are convergent product

catalog, online charging, Unified customer hierarchy and single convergent billing. Table 1.0 shows those

use cases and expected behavior.

Table 1.0 –Convergent Billing ; Major Features

Convergent Billing Feature Expected functionality

Uniform product catalog One of the key aspects of a convergent system is its

ability to bundle diverse products together to form

hybrid services and offer to customer. The major

factors which get positively influenced due to this

are, the operators capability to launch services

quickly and thus better ROI and reduced

implementation costs.

Single product and service catalogue is key in this

direction which could accommodate all services,

resource and product definitions of operator and

partner ecosystem.

The module is expected to have flexible and intuitive

management features to define services and

products, attributes associated, define business and

compatibility rules which could determine the

patterns while bundling and grouping, attach

resource and launch templates or plan offers to

customer.

The uniform catalog is also proposed as the central

entity where operator’s whole service, products and

plans across retail, corporate business being

defined and managed.

Real time charging or Online

charging system

The most widely discussed aspect of convergent

solution is its capability to handle convergent

charging and more specifically real time convergent

charging.

Convergent charging will help operators to launch

true convergent service portfolios like IMS video

calling , where the charging system not only need to

interact with next generation IMS network elements

for capturing the usage information in online , but

also perform session management and rating of two

diverse service portfolio which is Voice and Data.

Customer may have different rating characteristics

or tariff as part of his/her rate pan for addressing the

usage for voice and data usage even if the service

delivery is of a single hybrid service.

In addition to the convergent service charging, OCS

is also increasingly replacing camel based IN

platforms in the MNO network topology because of

latter’s inability to support complex charging and

promotions requirements which are more common

within the prepaid world of service delivery.

Flow based charging or service aware charging is

another use case which is now widely used by

operators in connection with offering VAS offerings

like social packs on top of subscriber’s base service

plans. Convergent real time rating or OCS as per

the international telecom standard body 3GPP is

being used as the solution framework to support

such type of charging.

In addition to service convergence, OCS or

convergent charging should also handle multiple

payment models- postpaid, prepaid and hybrid

across balance, credit limit and subscription limits.

Real time promotions or rating time discounts, which

need complex algorithms to work is another

powerful upselling and retention feature offered by

convergent billing solution

Personalized Charging is also increasingly popular

in terms of customer, location, bearer, access

channel, multi-service association, contents,

occasion, customer, etc.

Unified customer hierarchy Unified customer hierarchy is the ability of

convergent systems to support all subscriptions

across services and payment modes, maintaining all

the subscription and sharing rules, under one

customer entity.

It should also support multiple nodes of child

customers and respective subscription under a

parent customer hierarchy. The view offers a 360

degree view of customer’s service, subscription,

revenue patterns of each individual customer.

A key aspect of this function is the ability to manage

the subscriber profile repository of all service across

fixed, wireless and video spectrum.

Allowance sharing rules, defining thresholds, and

alert modes on expiry of limits, are defined at the

hierarchical level.

Single bill The most common use case of convergent billing

system is the single bill capability.

It is a combination of all the use case mentioned

above and in addition, bringing a capability to

consolidate all charges, across service and products

to form a single bill.

A convergent billing platform should also have the

capability to generate statements for prepaid

subscriptions as well within same bill.

It should support moving subscriptions across

hierarchy between different child nodes so as to

maintain different hierarchical view for charging,

billing and reporting.

Cross service discounts, another tool for upsell and

customer retention is also addressed within this

framework

Capability to address multiple currency, multi

country deployment options, tax on tax are other

features which are discussed in connection with this

function.

Convergent Billing - Current Implementation patterns

It is understood that, large MNO and MSOs who have deployed OCS or convergent billing system; still

depend on legacy billing or charging platforms like INs for their prevailing service portfolios like GSM, 2G

and most often the OCS or convergent platforms are only used to address newly launched service

portfolios in terms of 4G or LTE …reason being fear of change or cost incurred in migration.

However, there are other set of service providers which includes majority of ISPs and tier 2, tier 3 MSO

who are trying to innovate with new access technologies as part of competing in this new digital world.

Have been using legacy primitive business support systems or even no such systems, most of these

operators are not in a position to handle the multi play service delivery and monetization needs arise due

to this new competition . These operators are looking for systems which could be future proof in terms of

access network, innovative offer bundling, real time charging and other convergent use cases mentioned

above.

As capex and opex are major factor for these operators, they always want to have comprehensive

turnkey solutions which could address all convergent use cases rather restricting on selected

functionalities or system. Unlike large MNO or MSO, it will be easy for these operators to migrate their

existing systems into new convergent CRM and billing framework. A true convergence solution thus

provides a strong value proposition, by not only reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) but also

introducing ROI via a future proof investment.

Additional Use cases - Expanding the convergent framework beyond charging and billing

As explained in the table 1.0, convergent solution within telecom and media industry is more synonymous

towards a centralized product catalog, online charging, single bill and unified customer hierarchy. If

closely look into, these convergent features or use cases have a common element within it, which is

tracking the 360 degree view of its relationship with customers across different services and channels.

In that respect, other than the use cases mentioned above, there are other aspects as well from a

convergent perspective within the business and operation support framework, which can enhance

operator’s capability in addressing and managing customer expectation. Few to name include AAA &

policy management, unified self-care portals, notification and alert management, and customer care. It

is also important for operators to make use of these convergent customer and service information to

develop and deploy its strategy towards new customer acquisition, content /OTT partner management

etc by bringing similar capabilities across campaigns, and partner management functions.

Table 1.1, below defines those functions within the O/BSS framework where supporting uses cases on

convergence are identified.

Table 1.1 –Convergent Billing Support functions

OSS/BSS Function Convergent Features

AAA and captive portal A true convergent AAA platform should be capable of handling

fixed-mobile convergence across different access topologies.

Single stack which could address multiple access network 3GPP

(GPRS, UMTS, 4G) and Non 3GPP (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, DSL, ADSL,

FTTX, iburst)

Compliance to 3GPP AAA standards to support internetworking

of non 3GPP access over 3GPP service; Mobile data offload for

example

Diameter/Radius based convergent charging and policy

management interface is another expected function

LDAP, EAP , TLS, TTLS based authentication support to handle

3GPP and Non 3GPP network access and authentication.

DHCP provision for dynamic and static IP address management

Captive portal with built in templates of static and dynamic pages

and having option for easy customization as per operators

requirement

Multi user profile management with admin profile option against

each individual subscription – A must have functionality within

Captive portal management – significant from multi login, multi

device perspective of Wi-Fi, home broadband and OTT services.

Proxy and relaying capabilities over Radius and Diameter for

addressing Fixed-Mobile as well as IP based convergence

Policy Management For ISP and MSO who offer fixed and wireless broadband

services, a convergent policy management is need of the hour to

help operators address innovative use cases like

o Service aware session based charging & policy control

o Device and location based access Restriction

o Parental Control

o Bill shock prevention –credit control, allowance , prepaid

o APN and Access network based polices

The function could offer convergent uses cases on policy

management viz.. Prepaid and postpaid, access agnostic and

access specific policies. Fixed (DSL, ADSL, FTTX), Mobile,

3GPP (GPRS, UMTS, LTE) and Non 3GPP services (Wi-Fi and

Wimax).

The function shall thus comply with 3GPP PCRF specification as

well as broadband –forum BPCF standards

Policy interfaces towards different network elements and touch

points viz.. IMS AF, AAA, NAS, PCEF and DPI means the policy

function shall support both Radius and Diameter interfaces.

The function shall have layered approach so that operators as

per their business requirements could easily enable or disable

the policy templates and interface points.

Wherever common policy implementation possible - across

wireless-wired or prepaid-postpaid spectrum, the system should

have options to allow define and implement those policies thus

avoiding redundancy.

Unified self-care portal with

multiple profiles and

integrated payment gateways

Convergence at Customer level is the key aspect of

convergence highlighted across this whitepaper. Convergent

charging, convergent billing and unified customer hierarchy as

well as single bill are prominent use cases to establish that fact.

A unified self-care platform for both prepaid and postpaid

segments as well as all quad play services is very key in that

respect - of both convergence as well as customer experience.

Provides a common platform for customer to access and

manage all his portfolio across diverse plans or service he

subscribed to .

Other prominent features within a unified self-care platform

should include calendar features, limit definition , setting

reminder, expiry notices on packs and plans subscribed– which

will enhance customers confidence with the operator and build a

more loyal relationship result more revenue.

Family accounts and corporate pooling are other features for

convergent self-care portal where admin or parent users will

define limit and add additional products to child users as per the

usage patterns.

Integrated payment gateways with PCI standards along with

support for different patterns of online payment - interactive and

non-interactive, tokenized etc.

Integrated work flow and

notification management

A convergent business and operation support system should

have enough flexibility by means of event management feature

to manage different events across various business processes

involved –credit limit expiry, payment, order generation, billing

etc.

The function should be part of a common framework which

should allows user to map specific set of actions against certain

set of . The framework shall allow operators to select events

and set actions which must be pre-configured viz...Send

notifications to subscribers, usage and payment reminder,

promotional offers etc. This information shall be able to be sent

through various channels - like e-mail, OSD, STB, E- mail,

Mobile SMS.

The framework shall allow the actions to be either synchronous

or processed as part of a schedule which means an option shall

be part of the system.

Contact Center & Customer

Interaction modules

Contact center provides the convergence of multiple interaction

channels; It is the capability within the contact center to offer

multiple channel based interactions call, Web , email and chat

Another aspect is the ability to address all subscribers or

customer interaction irrespective of the service and product

portfolio they subscriber to.

IVR, ACD , Web chat , integrated routing policies to avoid

conflict , access to unified customer repository and CTI interface

are those features required to be part of such a platform .

Campaign Management Campaign management and targeted marketing could make use

of the unified customer information provided as part of a

convergent solution –customer profile, bill, usage patterns,

payment patterns, balances, status, services and products so

that it could enable real time marketing initiatives and

campaigns.

Will benefit in the form of increased ARPU, upselling of new

services and also to generate loyalty among existing customers

SOA based charging,

ordering , customer

management framework for

OTT, Video Monetization

Convergent charging and billing solution as explained in the

introduction is a key factor in supporting channels like OTT and

IPTV services.

Operators understand the need to partner with OTT players and

video content providers so that they could protect their revenue

streams. The partnership brings a set of features and interface

from the convergent system perspective.

o Customer information exposed over an SOA framework

so that OTT players could verify the customer

credentials and balance /credit before provision the

requested service

o OTT and content partners also can also make use of

convergent unified customer profile information to

understand the buying and consumption patterns to

personalize the offerings.

o Similarly from a billing perspective the convergent

system should be capable of interfacing with external

applications like OTT and IPTV middleware to capture

the usage information of the services consumed so that

it can be consolidated in the single bill to customer.

Customer will receive a single bill across its services

irrespective of operator service or OTT services.

Partner Management and

Revenue share

From partner management of OTT /IPTV /Content providers,

operators need the system to support following business

requirements.

o Shared product catalog management

o Convergent billing as a service - MVNE

o Partner management and billing

o Reconciliation of bills. comparison of usage and dispute

management

Orchestrating disparate

provisioning requirements

across multi play service

request –

Handling multiple services, quad play, triple play services and

products across different customer types and partner chain

involves complex provisioning requirements. A convergent

provisioning feature shall be available with a flexible adapter

based on rule driven configuration to communicate with the

network elements and provision the service.

This could also include integration towards third party networks

and middleware systems where partners like OTT players are

involved.

The adapter as per the rules and configurations against various

services, region, device type, should interface with respective

network elements for execute the corresponding network -

specific commands as part of provisioning

Service and network agonistic

Mediation

A convergent mediation platform provides an enterprise-wide

platform which could help operators to address the billing

mediation, network mediation and data collection challenges

across different network elements and partner systems.

Act as the key entry point for network usage analysis where

usage CDR can be pushed to an analytical engine to extract key

customer and usage patterns and take appropriate actions to

stop revenue and customer churn

Act as a consolidation point towards all usage mediation,

requirements across multiple access technologies are IP, IMS,

traditional fixed line and circuit.

The mediation will also abstract billing, charging application from

data points which means reduced time to market for new data

sources and application.

The support features mentioned over table 1.1, are especially significant and will add value for the ISP

and MSOs, who always want to go for those systems which could support the end to end use cases

rather than point features and functionalities. A fully convergent operation and business support system

built around the convergent framework as mentioned in this whitepaper can help operators to achieve

both their primary and secondary objectives which are increase in revenue and a faster ROI respectively.

Conclusion

To roll out next generation digital services and to content with growing customer expectations, operators

across the world are looking for convergent solutions and that fact is evident from the recent research

report showing convergent charging implementation alone is projected for 14 Billion USD by 2017.

From an ISP or MSO perspective, an end to end convergent solution is what they could afford rather than

implementing point solutions. Hence, a business and operation support system which could provide the

convergent framework over customer hierarchy, product bundling, real time charging and single bill along

with other supporting functions across service -access delivery and support chain is the need of hour.

Biju M R Telecom & Media OSS/ BSS –Architect & SME

Biju.vrindavan@gmail.com +91 7768067700