Transcript Redknee Canto 2005 Final

CANTO 2005
Towards Next-Generation Convergent Billing Systems
CTO – Bohdan Zabawskyj
June 2005
Agenda
Objectives
Review the requirements of next-generation
convergent billing solutions
Agenda
Redknee
Subscriber & Carrier Requirements
Billing
Traditional Approaches
Real-Time Value-Based Rating
Open Architectures
The Value Chain
Summary
Products with Results
Preferred vendor by leading
customers
Proven products with over
200 deployments
Significant network and
product experience
Awards for
innovation and management
Redknee is a provider of services
infrastructure products to wireless
network operators
Our products enable customers to
enrich and extend their network
service capabilities and service
offerings for their subscribers
Our product categories include Real
Time Payment & Rating, Messaging,
Location and Call/Data control
Redknee’s clients benefit by being able
to offer more competitive services
and interactive content that their
subscribers value
Essential Service Attributes
Services must embody the interrelated user values of:
Conspicuous value
Value and operation of service is immediately appreciated
Profound simplicity
Presentment of only essential controls and information
Self-evidence
Controls are intuitive, context sensitive, and adaptive
Carriers must provide capabilities to improve services per the key
user values:
Personal
Tailored to the individual & adaptive
Localized
Information relevant to the subscriber’s current location
Timely
Relevant to the subscriber’s current activities and not delayed so
that it becomes a nuisance or irritant
Actionable
So that the subscriber can actively react to and control a service in
an intuitive manner
Carrier Requirements
• Leverage existing infrastructure
• Non-functional requirements
• Support of open industry standards
• Differentiate operator offering from competing service
providers
•
Offer flexible and configurable rate plans
•
Customize rate plans for subscriber groups
• Enable application/content partners to effectively and
rapidly launch new mobile services
• Provide device/platform transparency to subscribers and
service providers
• Provide a scalable, robust, and evolvable system
• Deliver personalized experience to mobile subscribers, while
ensuring subscriber privacy
Traditional Billing Strategies
To the extent that CDRs or events
services are not consolidated - the CDR
mediation platform cannot correlate
disparate billing records produced by
existing network elements. This in turn
precludes a cohesive billing capability.
IN based billing
mechanisms are
isolated from postbased billing and
settlement processes.
IP
Mediation
Function
SCP
CDRs
SMS-C/
MMS-C
MSC/VLR
Billing
Systems
CDR
Mediation
CDRs
Processed
CDRs
CDRs
CDRs
Rating
Subscribers receive
multiple invoices and/or
charges associated with
services are distributed in
a non-intuitive manner.
GPRS/
PDSN
CDRs
DSLAM
Rating of services
have traditionally
been undertaken by
separate platforms for
wireline and wireless
services.
Printers
Data
Network
Invoices
Billing &
Settlement
Core Network
Infrastructure
Switch
Traditional Prepaid and
Postpaid Billing Architectures
Copyright (c) - Redknee
Customer Care
Customer
Information
The inability to accrue value in a
meaningful manner precludes the
formulation of a clear pricing strategy
and results in customer confusion
which in turn increases op-ex costs.
Without Converged Billing
Problem 1
Customer receives multiple bills per service despite
being the same service provider
Problem 2
Customers
Carrier cannot provide cross-service rating and
billing schemas
Problem 3
Multiple billing and rating systems greatly increases
infrastructure, ownership and support costs.
Problem 4
Multiple CRM applications = higher training cost and
poor customer satisfaction
Three Key Issues For Next-Generation Rating Solutions
It Is Not About Bandwidth and ‘bps’, It Is About Creating Value
from the Perspective of a Seamless Subscriber Experience:
–
Cohesive subscriber management
–
Service access across multiple access technologies
–
Open architectures for subscriber context and preference
information
Moving from MoU (Minutes of Use) to Billable Events
–
Billing & provisioning are not adequate
–
Usage based rating is inappropriate and confusing
Value Creation
–
Latent demand for value based services
–
Services are increasingly focused chronologically and spatially
• Traditional service deployment tactics are becoming less
relevant
• Operator development & testing for 6 months
• Event that is deployed for 2 weeks
• Billing cycle of 3 months
Need for Real-Time Rating
•
A convergent billing environment is associated with
the rating of any transactional event, irrespective of
the delivery technology involved, in real-time.
•
Allows transaction-oriented charges to be accrued
and applied against a given subscriber over any
chronological period – allows for:
•
–
Prepaid services
–
Postpaid services
–
Per-use
–
Bucket billing
Enable the application of complex rating structures
traditionally associated with a postpaid environment
to a prepaid environment
Convergence Requirements
A convergent environment must incorporates the following:
Concurrent support of:
Integration with existing/anticipated IN/ISC (IP multi-media Service Control)
trigger based functionality.
Processing of CDRs.
Provision of intermediation capabilities where required
Versatile and high performance rating engine
Supports both transactional real-time and high-performance batch
processing on a single platform.
Events can be associated with multiple rules and charges and can also be
associated with loyalty programs concurrently.
Powerful, user-friendly Customer Relationship Management tools.
Intuitive GUIs allowing users (or customer care representatives) to view
historical usage or alter preferences/subscription information.
Real-time engine permits charges or payments to be immediately reflected
(visible) in the account.
With Converged Billing
Single Invoice for all services.
Customers
Integrated rating/billing schemas – e.g. bundle
discounts, loyalty plans and promotions.
Hybrid rating scenarios – prepaid wireless data,
contract wireline and wireless voice, usage
based DSL rating.
Charges reflect value of the service including
regional/chronological/QoS factors.
Single, scalable solution for all services – Total
Cost of Ownership decreases.
Implications of Open Architectures
Relevant market driver is the pervasive adoption of
Open Systems Architectures…
…which creates greater innovation and value across
the entire industry value chain:
Example: “Plug and Play” enabled the PC software ecosystem
Example: TCP/IP & HTML enabled the networking & ‘e-commerce’
ecosystem
Value of an “Open” Approach
Open Systems offer proven business benefits:
Increased ROI with Reduced Risk
Flexibility & Interoperability
Simpler and Quicker Integration
Larger ecosystem and resource pools
Ability to choose “best of breed” vendors
An implication of opening networks is the shift from vertical
products to horizontally integrated solutions
Open Architectures in Wireless Carriers
Device convergence driven by
function density (phone, PDA)
Service convergence
driven by mobility
and personalization
OSS/BSS
monetization evolving
to real-time (Redknee)
Network convergence driven
by low cost bits (IP, VoIP)
M-Commerce Value Chain
Carrier and 3-rd
Party Application
Developers
User Profile Web Services
(Charging, Account
Management, Presence,
Preferences, Terminal
Information etc.)
Services Include:
Service
Creation
Environment
· Traditional IN Services (Prepaid, VPN, PNS)
· Contextual Services (Location/Presence)
· Community-of-Interest Based Services (multi-player
gaming, chat)
Open Object Oriented APIs focusing on
session and content control
(CORBA, SOAP-XML)
SIP
State of subscriber is
dynamically used to
optimize services in
Real-Time
Network Abstraction and Real-Time Rating
SIP or DIAMETER
GUP
Server
SGSN
Smartphones
Copyright (c) - Redknee
SIP enabled clients
communicate communicate
with other applications or
with centralized servers.
GGSN
Internet
CSCF
HSS
Core Network
Infrastructure
M-Commerce Value Chain in an IMS Environment
Carriers have a central role in the m-commerce value chain:
– As a trusted intermediary
– Support of micro-transactions
– The provision of value added services and information
•
•
Subscriber context and preferences
Enable the 3G Vision Today
Open Service & Application Creation Environment
Open architectures provide an effective and efficient service creation environment
where existing network capabilities can be accessed and leveraged using object
oriented API’s
Real Time Transacted Services
Facilitates the correlation of value to a given
service by supporting application of
transactional or periodic charging of any
event to any class of subscriber (pre-paid,
post-paid, or combined)
Time To Market
Accelerates velocity of service creation
environment to provide a suite of
activations which are contextually and
chronologically relevant to an individual
subscriber
Redknee Sales
[email protected]
http://www.redknee.com
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+ 1 905 625 2773
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