Art-ology

The telecom domain is a very exciting area now a days. We now have everything from a simple phone line to mobile cellular phones. Today with so many offerings and bundling options, customers have the freedom to choose what they want and how they use the services. As an ISP it is important that regardless of the customer usage, every byte that travels through the network is accounted for. This is the importance of Telecom billing solution.

Billing systems have an important task to play in all kinds of services on offer, regardless of how simple or complex it may be. PSTN phone lines have been around for ages, so billing their usage should be straight forward. This is true as long as we do not include things like long distance and international calls. Different areas have different rates and they need to be billed properly. Similarly, when a customer moves operators and wants to retain their phone number, that throws up a new billing challenge.

In the developed world, it is not uncommon for the new mobile cellular data plans to come with some data limit followed by billing for every additional kilobyte that is used in the network. In the developing nations, there are mobile pre-paid plans that run for a couple of weeks and are then stopped. Keeping track of all these plans and services and ensuring that every one of the transactions is accounted for is just what billing solutions are designed to do.

While the importance of telecom billing solutions is clear, their deployment needs to be looked at in more detail. There are many aspects of a proper billing solution that need to be considered. A standard billing solution will encompass everything from hardware to customer support – the complete cycle.

The most basic requirement for a billing solution is the hardware, a system that can run telecom OSS. The next, obviously, is the software itself. The software has to be good enough to scale to a large number of customers and flexible enough to handle various service offerings. The next item is the billing cycles. Most billing solutions allow for a certain number of billing cycles where the usage is billed in bulk processing. ISPs need to finalize how many cycles per month and when to have them.

Another equally important part of the billing solution is distributing the bills to the customers and collecting their payments. The bill distribution can be the traditional printed bills or the newer online bills. Either way, the bill information needs to reach the user well in advance. The next step is to facilitate the collection of bill payments. Drop boxes, auto payments, tie ups with banks and online are some options.

Last, but certainly not the least, is the customer care support for the billing details itself. More often than not, customers do not understand the plan details and are surprised with the billed amount. Other times, there could be genuine glitch in the billing software. All these need to be handled by a customer care department.

In conclusion, Telecom Billing OSS is a great option that ISPs pursue to ensure that revenues keep coming regardless of the service offerings they provide to the customers. Adopting a billing solution requires a good understanding and study of various aspects. A good knowledge of Telecom Billing System can help in building a great billing solution that delivers the best results.