Show me the money

摘要

To the layman a billing system may sound like a simple concept, registering how much you spend and charging you for it. Those in the know realise that there is a lot more to it than that. The technology used by many cable and telecom operators is particularly complicated, partly because the cash-strapped industry has sought to stretch the life of legacy systems by bolting on new components and because consolidation has led to proprietary kit being developed to get merged systems talking to each other. Add to this the growth of triple-play services - voice, video and data - and things really get messy.