By Wang Lin
The billing system is a vital element in any telecom network and the best place to start the transformation process. Since the billing system links two core carrier assets (networks and customers) together, its transformation is in fact the most important transformation of all.
Telcos are becoming increasingly restless as they watch Internet companies benefit most from the digital economy. Many have proposed the "de-telecom" concept or "injection of Internet genes" in an effort to transform themselves along ISP lines, but telco transformation is not about abandoning existing advantages to engage Internet companies in an increasingly homogenized market. It should be about business model transformation through digital operation, with Internet innovation complementing existing strengths. Telcos' billing systems, which give feedback to customers regarding their Internet consumption behavior, are the best places to start. In fact, since they associate telecom networks with Internet IT innovation, they are the very key to business transformation.
From networks to experiences
A traditional billing system is network-derived, a tool that calculates the fees users should pay for network usage. However, the current digital economy emphasizes "experience first, service foremost," and an ordinary billing system does not inspire loyalty. Carriers must redesign their billing systems around customer experience-orientation, with the goal of making customers feel valued and thus willing to pay higher premiums.
A reformed billing system should have the following features:
Integration: Traditional billing systems are network-dependent, with network and service limitations directly perceptible to users. If an intelligent network (IN) billing system only supports GSM voice billing, subscribers cannot use data services. The coexistence of multi-standard networks, coupled with the isolation of pre-paid and post-paid billing systems, leads to multiple billing systems, thus aggravating this problem. A new-generation billing engine should support all standards, physical interfaces, and value-added services, while shielding the differences in CT network elements (NEs). It should also provide unified online billing and control capabilities for the IT layer, including those for actual services and different user types (pre-paid/post-paid/hybrid). Finally, a new billing engine should support all network services, making it the very foundation of customer-centric billing.
Real-time functionality: Traditional billing systems do not operate in real time, and carriers have long dismissed this notion. However, IN billing systems do, but only with the aim of collecting fees more quickly. The digital economy has revolutionized service usage behavior, with users now growing more and more accustomed to real-time experience. They need real-time updates about how much data is left, as no one wants to exceed their data cap while watching a movie. A next-gen billing engine should feature real-time monitoring, billing, alarm, and service recommendation, so users can have a real-time understanding of their data and voice consumption.
Agility: The digital economy is accelerating consumption. Traditional billing systems can no longer keep up due to a lack of customization or on-demand design. Next-gen billing should be agile in terms of products and services through a flexible business rule engine and business script, thus reducing time-to-market (TTM) from months to hours. A flexible engine makes product design inter-disciplinary work, as opposed to telco-only. Carriers can cooperate with ISPs to provide targeted and differentiated service packages, or with terminal manufacturers to provide tariff packages bundled with certain phones.
Billing as a service
Not long ago, people were using cellphones that offered voice and SMS only. Today they revel in their smartphones. Smartphone makers themselves have received the lion’s share of the credit, but the real facilitators have been a variety of invisible service support systems, or more accurately, application clouds for support platforms.
As the owners of a vast amount of device-related user information, and with a monopoly in terms of network pipes, telcos have also tried to build cloud services, but with little success. This is because they have largely offered “me-too” cloud service models already perfected by OTTs. Telcos would do better to leverage their networks and the enormous amount of accurate user information they hold to carry out IT restructuring, starting with the building of an agile IT-enabled billing system. This is how telcos can break their closed operating model and create a trump card for cloud operations.
To build a superior billing cloud that helps industries achieve digital billing, telcos must cloud their billing architecture so that independent service clouds can be packaged and offered to third parties. The cloud components include five modules: real-time user authentication & authorization, data switching & collection, pricing & billing, interconnection settlement, and transaction & payment.
The traditional online charging gateway should be upgraded to a user authentication/authorization center. A modular authentication/authorization center makes unified processes highly efficient and improves user experience through single sign-on (SSO) and single authorization functionality, thus minimizing the inconvenience of logging in many times to various Internet services.
Traditional mediation should be upgraded into a data switching & collection center, which can collect, confirm, and aggregate data on carrier networks.
A new pricing and billing center should be accessible for third-party use. For example, a power company might install SIM cards in electric meters for interconnected pricing, enabling automated meter reading, billing, and bill delivery.
The traditional partner settlement system should be upgraded for third-party access. Such a system should support flexible multi-service, multi-partner settlement, enabling third-party statistics and financial settlement involving upstream and downstream channels.
The traditional fee collection, user charging, and revenue stream management system should be upgraded to a new transaction & payment center, once again available to any third party. It should support mobile phone and banking settlement between vendors and users, as well as revenue stream management functions such as circulation and exchange of product resources, discount coupons, and virtual currency. This new center could also be deployed in other capacities such as railway coverage, enabling customers to buy tickets by sending a short message on their handset.
Case study: Telenor Pakistan
The billing system swap for Telenor Pakistan (TP) has been the first step in Telenor Group's strategic transformation in Asia. The Group’s leaders have attached great importance to this swap, dubbed "Trango" (a Pakistani peak notoriously hard to conquer). TP planned to build a brand new IT architecture-based billing engine to realize transformation from traditional billing to a market-oriented revenue-generating operating model. The new billing engine would greatly optimize customer experience and shorten service TTM.
With the help of Huawei, the project results were extraordinary, even in the face of what seemed endless difficulties. The new system supports all user categories (pre- and post-paid) and delivers online real-time billing for all services (voice, SMS, MMS, and data services), while preventing large-scale bad debts from the source. The system’s agility ensures that most requirements do not need customized development, shortening service TTM from half a year to one to three days. With the successful transformation of its billing system, the foundation is laid for TP’s other transformations.
According to Irfan Wahab Khan, TP’s CMO, "I am very excited and proud to witness the success of such a big and important swapping project. More surprising is that the upgrade leads to successful business transformation of Telenor through perfect integration of technical and business processes. I must say the painstaking work of the Trango project team, consisting of Telenor and Huawei members, proved a great success. "
