Throughout the incredible journey of the telecom OSS/BSS sector over
the last 10 years, VanillaPlus has remained a reliable source of both key
news but also informative, objective and thought-provoking assessments of
the key trends which have shaped our industry. I am looking forward to
VanillaPlus and their more recent Stream journal continuing to play a key
role in providing valuable insights as we enter one of the most exciting
phases of the telecoms OSS/BSS market evolutions.
Kieran Moynihan
Vice President & CTO Telecoms
IBM Tivoli Division
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: Inaccurate Billing
2008-06-24 17:18:53
Accurate billing is still proving to be a challenge with many ‘triple play’ providers under- and over-billing for content. So VanillaPlus doffs its cap to James Brunson of Spirent who was quoted as follows recently.
Brunson, Landslide product
marketing manager at Spirent, explained: “We’re seeing a common theme across
many operators worldwide in that there can be issues when it comes to billing
accurately. Many of these glitches are due to poor network intelligence and the
fact that many triple play providers have grown by acquisition meaning a
‘mishmash’ of systems which don’t always talk accurately to each other all of
the time.
"It’s not uncommon to find network nodes which are known to be
inaccurate with rules written to counter-balance inaccurate billing. Whilst
these are accurate most of the time, it is not fail-safe. There are particular
issues when it comes to differentiating between ‘session-based billing’ which is
flat-rate or pay for duration (such as an international phone call) and
‘service-based billing’, where one pays extra for specific content (such as
video on demand). As such many customers are being billed
inaccurately," added Brunson.
Either way, operators stand to
lose. Overbilled customers may complain and overload customer service staff and
help lines. There is also the risk of churn should they remain dissatisfied. And
obviously customers which are under billed represent lost
revenue.
Brunson continued: "Deep packet inspection will
certainly help to look at service based billing and discover exactly what
customers are being billed for. However it is just as important that operators
test continuously to ensure that rules written relate to actual traffic
patterns.”
While this may not come as news to many service providers, VanillaPlus finds it
refreshing to hear such candour on a widespread industry problem.
Filed under: Billing IPTV Network Operators/VNOs Opinion