The success of wireless connectivity is dependent on many things, not least of which is billing. This article looks at the requirements emerging for billing as wireless connectivity is deployed, new services are enabled and the service delivery value chain disaggregates.

What will customers use wireless connectivity for?

To start with we need to understand how customers will use wireless connectivity. To answer this, we need to look at customer types. The break-out from the old telephony service world will requires an increase in the sophistication with which CSPs segment and target their customer base. Until CSPs get to grip with this, let's continue to use the traditional segmentation of consumers versus business customers.

Consumer requirements are expanding towards content services. Consumers are prepared to pay for the value they receive from the content rather than paying for the transporting of that content.

On the other hand, business customer requirements are expanding towards customised, integrated communications solutions enabled by a portfolio of capabilities based on connectivity, infrastructure management and IT services.

In both segments end customers want to access services wherever they may be, with whatever device they choose. They want the network and service to know who they are and what they like (their profile), wherever they go. They want to know how much they will have to pay and who to contact if they have questions or if they experience difficulties. And, to an increasing extent, they want to be able to manage their relationship with their CSP themselves. They do not want to do things differently depending on the network type or even to have to know what type of network they are using. In short, they want the entire experience of using the services to be simple and the same each time and they want to feel they are in control.

Implications for CSPs

CSPs must decide which pieces of the service delivery chain they will provide themselves and which they will rely on partners to provide. At one end this concerns content providers and content aggregators. At the other end it concerns providers of licenced mobile networks, hot spots, wireless local loops, etc. Many factors influence their decisions but it is unlikely that a CSP will provide all segments of the delivery network (wireline, mobile and unlicensed spectrum) across the entirety of its geographic coverage. It is far more likely that we will have a pastiche of multiple network providers, some of whom may also be service providers, and this will present new challenges for the CSPs.

Customer-impacting business processes will require information flows between the various organisational entities along the supply chain. These include processes such as authentication, authorisation & accounting (e.g. choice of payment types) and service delivery that depend on the customer profile information. In addition, charging and accounting processes necessitate the correlation of records of sessions, transactions and events along the supply chain to determine what should be charged to whom and for how much. Furthermore, processes must be established for the settlement between the partners involved in providing the various pieces of the route to the customer, as well as processes for problem handling.

All of these impose new requirements on BSS and OSS . On the content and application supply side these include new platforms for Partner Relationship Management and Service Creation / Service Delivery. In business operations these include new requirements for Mediation and Billing, Accounts Receivable and Collections, Product Catalogue, QoS management, DRM enforcement, Inventory Management and Fault Management. And on the demand side they include Service Registration and Fulfilment, Self-Service, Customer Analytics, Sales, Trouble Ticketing, and Payments.

Billing Challenges

Looking at customer billing in more detail, systems must be restructured to provide a complete, 360 degree view that allows the customer to be managed on a holistic basis, independent of the types of network used to deliver services. This drives a consolidation onto a small number of flexible, scalable, convergent billing platforms (which, happily, is consistent with the CSP's need to reduce operational expenditure). It also drives the integration of billing systems with CRM and other BSS / OSS components which is facilitated by open and modular systems architectures.

In addition, new functional requirements arise that are extensions of existing requirements supported by many retail billing systems in operation today. These include:

•  Bundling of complex and diverse groups of new services that may be delivered over different or multiple network types

•  Real time, on-line charging to provide spending control mechanisms that protect both the customer and the service provider

•  High availability to meet the “always on” requirements of real time

•  Digital Rights Management to restrict access to content to those entitled to it

•  Transactional processing to support billing for content and m-commerce

•  Hybrid customers who have both a professional persona and a consumer persona (“pro-sumers”)

•  Flexible payment methods to offer the customer a choice of payment method (pre-paid, post-paid, credit card or bank debit) at the time of service use

Looking beyond these extensions to existing capabilities of modern billing platforms, new categories of billing requirements can be envisaged. First among these is Context Sensitive billing. This is where the billing arrangements, including who pays and how much, are dependent on the context in which the service is consumed. The context can be determined by one or more parameters from an extensive range. For example, the price for service delivery to a terminal device with a small screen may be less than for the delivery to a terminal device with a large, high resolution screen; the price for delivery over 2.5G may be lower than for delivery over 3G or WiFi; there may be a different price for leisure access from that for professional access. For each of these, different revenue sharing arrangements may be implemented resulting in the customer paying different proportions of the overall price with other portions being paid by third parties. Many more options and combinations can be envisaged. However, over-arching the technical requirements to support this type of billing is the need to keep things simple and clear to the customers so they know how much they have to pay for what.

Another category of new billing requirement is Person-to-Person billing. This is where the service provider's customers make payments to each other via their accounts in the billing platform. This may be useful for grid computing applications for between business customers and peer-to-peer content transactions between consumers.

How to get there

How can a CSP meet the known requirements and, at the same time, position itself to meet new requirements that will emerge in future?

The guiding principles are captured in a new term that is rising to prominence: Integrated Customer Management. This is a way of doing business where the focus is on delivering an intentional, differentiated customer experience and where all corporate resources are agile and aligned. The result is the creation and capture of maximum value.

Integrated Customer Management relates to everything the CSP does, not only billing. However, by adopting Integrated Customer Management as the vision for its business, a CSP has a context against which to make decisions on billing requirements and capabilities. That way it stands the best chance of avoiding billing being a constraint on its success in wireless connectivity.

On its own, Billing cannot ensure the success of wireless connectivity services but if it is not done appropriately it can delay or diminish that success.

About the Author

Neil is the Director of Solutions Strategy at Amdocs. Neil's team is responsible for: understanding the impact of emerging trends and business drivers on Service Provider's business support systems today; defining the resulting market requirements; positioning Amdocs' offers to the market to address these requirements.

Neil has more than 20 years management and consulting experience. He has worked extensively in the communications industry for fixed network and mobile operators in many parts of the world. His expertise covers business development, management, marketing, information systems strategy, change management and all stages of the software systems lifecycle. Neil was President of the Global Billing Association from 2002 to 20.