Billing: changing shape, changing colour...

摘要

Billing is at the heart of revenue generation in telecomms... but the demands placed upon today's systems are greater than before and ever-changing... The billing philosophies, strategies and technologies that underpinned the voice-centric fixed-line telecommunications business today seem unremarkable. Among the most important triggers and components of end-user bills were rental/subscription fees and charges for call duration, distance and time of day. With the exception of reverse charging and freefone calls, the calling party generally paid for calls. Wireless telephony billing was similarly structured, although 'called-party-pays' was the norm in some markets. Billing for data added metrics such as committed information rate, 'pipe size' and so on. With limited metrics in play, the data volumes generated for use in Call Detail Records (CDRs) were modest. Add a few other wrinkles and that basically was the telecommunications billing deal. Until now.