Everything That Telecom Billing OSS Can Do For Your Business   by Ben Pate

in Technology / Communication    (submitted 2010-11-30)

Telecommunications has seen a lot of changes in the last few decades. What started off as a plain telephone system today is a big universe of voice, data and video all bundled in various ways to deliver the ultimate communications experience for the customer. As the telecommunication services get more and more varied and complex, the telecom billing system used to bill them also needs to keep pace. Unless the billing solutions are advanced enough, the service provider cannot really tap into the various services that modern technology can offer.

When one looks at advanced nations, the service providers have moved from plain telephone service providers to bundled service providers. Their customers can now opt for high speed internet, with long distance land line phones and a digital television service. While they are three different services, the customers expect to get a single unified bill. Consolidating all these services into one bill can be quite a challenge for the service providers.

In the mobile phone domain, there are quite a few alternatives. The modern phones are mini computing machines which can support voice calls, messaging and even internet browsing and GPS. Different phone models have different features and hence different user traffic. The billing solutions need to adapt to these traffic patterns and bill accordingly.

Lastly, in the developing nations with fast growing mobile markets, the operators come out with offers for very short time durations like over the weekend. In such cases, the billing solution needs to be able to adapt to the ever changing rates and the fickle needs of the customers. This again requires a robust billing system.

The billing solution typically used in the companies today requires the sales personnel to enter the kind of service the customer opts for into the billing system. The billing system then knows how the user should be billed. Based on the usage traffic metrics from the network, the billing system applies the billing rates to the usage to come out with the final bill.

After the billing is calculated, the bills need to be created and sent to the customer. The first challenge is that the customer must receive the billing information. Traditionally, postal services used to deliver the bills. Today with the internet, the billing information can be obtained online also.

The customer should be given enough time to pay the bill. The modern service providers allow the customer to pay the bill by cash at the counter, by checks, through bank transfers or online using credit cards. The payment received from these various sources must capture and recorded accurately by the billing system.

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It is clear that a telecom billing OSS is quite an important part of the telecom business. There are many aspects that need to be factored in to the billing. The telecom billing software needs to strike a balance between the varied customer needs and appropriate billing and payment collection for the service provider.