Our industry is rapidly evolving on a number of fronts, particularly when it comes to the management of customer life changing services. Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are working to bring advanced business and pricing models to market in an effort to keep pace with competitive offers and to deliver more consistent customer value.
Such change in business strategy requires new functions within Business Support (BSS) and Operations Support (OSS) systems. It also means modification to the business processes defining how services are sold, provisioned, managed and billed.
These services have placed challenges on the billing functions, service fulfillment, and service assurance domains. But there is still more.With the proliferation of new service capabilities, enabled especially by the evolution of network and user devices, comes the exponential increase in data generation by customers using both mobile and fixed-line services. Such increases are now a significant influencer for what has evolved into the “core triumvirate” of real time business support need: billing system upgrades to address real-time rating & charging; policy management tied to customer-defined service options, business definition, and technology operability; and usage data collection (especially IP-based deep packet collection) to understand customer service uptake and for policy enforcement.
This paper defines the BSS challenges involving management of the flow of customer usage transactions. It outlines the basic features a policy management solution should address, and how it ties with the rating & charging and data discovery functions. It also explains how one supplier—Volubill—is working to meet this real-time business challenge.
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AUTHOR SUMMARY
Mac Taylor
The Moriana Group
Mac Taylor founded The Moriana Group in 2000, to provide analysis, research and consultancy services to the telecom industry, specializing in the service layer and next generation networks. In 2002, he co-authored the world’s first analyst report on OSA/Parlay: The OSA/Parlay Report: Enabling the Convergence of Telecom and IT. He pioneered the concept of free Operator Guides and was the editor ofService Delivery Platforms and Telecom Web Services – an Industry Wide Perspective (2004) which included twenty papers from SDP thought leaders. This report has influenced the development of SDP in the industry reaching over 12,000 readers worldwide. He has also worked as consultant with Deutsche Bank private equity, and with Middle East investment funds in Telecom & IT. He has a wide network of contacts with key personnel working in carriers, service providers, system integrators, vendors, ISVs and VCs. He has been regular speaker and has chaired a number of industry conferences on SDP since 2003. He holds an MA from Cambridge University in England.
