Billing system against a telecom market evolution background

Knowledge Base -> Publications

12.12.2007

Resource: "Vek Kachestva" Magazine, N6, December, 2007

But the best demonstration by far is experience.
Francis Bacon

Many slogans bear out simplicity to be the perfection. Practically, simplification has taken centric stage in all fields of our life. Simplification of styles, shapes, processes etc. But on the way to simplicity sometimes we face the fact that everything becomes more complex. At present, when world is changing fast the only thing constant and permanent is the changes themselves. And in such an environment, simplicity and convenience for subscribers are resulted from these changes. But as for providers, it's quite opposite as a rule...


Only 20 years ago the Russian telecom market was presented by one telecom operator. At present, telecom landscape has dramatically shifted - from launching wireless networks and demonopolization of the market to appearing miscellaneous technologies of data, voice and video transmission. In spite of the fact that it's 21st century already, some operators are exploring business-processes of the previous century because they didn't transformed their operations fundamentally. Of course, providers have modified their processes but these changes tailored to adaptation of new technologies and deployment of new networks types. Such an approach cannot but impact financial results of service providers.

So, what's happening in the business of contemporary Russian telecom service providers? Ubiquitous convergence; transformation of the telecom operators' infrastructure; enlargement of their business and entering new niches, for example, fixed line operators and mobile operators are developing TV service, ISPs start to render telephony and video services etc. All these processes are taking place on the telecom market. We can see now that Russian telecom market is evolving...

Now, for Russian telecom providers the following tasks are becoming vital: to transform existing business models and to choose relevant strategy to develop business that is matching the global standards. TeleEvo 2007 held in Moscow also proved these goals to be important.
Currently telecom industry evolution makes telecom operators to migrate to new business processes where customers and their preferences and demands take the centric stage. First of all, modification of business model influences the service provider relations with customers and suppliers, and it also impacts on their relations presented in billing system, CRM and ERP. In case these applications are not flexible to the changes which are to be adapted to the customer relations (payment, support, bonus programs) then new business models can't be implemented efficiently. And successful implementation of the business strategy isn't impossible in this case also.

Despite different business models in different countries, telecom providers face similar problems. To increase their revenues they are to reach customer loyalty as well as enlarge their client base. To possess complete information about subscribers and ability to analyze their data nowadays are becoming a foundation to build successful customer relations and to offer different customized services.

Technology development and satiety of Russian telecom market formed a minimum requirement for essential and lucrative services including:
- Broadband Internet access (Ethernet, xDSL, WiMAX, Wi-Fi) including Intelligent Service Selection gateway (ISG/SSG);
- Internet access through dedicated lines (ISDN);
- Local, long distance, and international fixed-line telephone communications (PSTN);
- Voice over IP services (VoIP, IP telephony);
- Internet access through Dial-Up connections;
- Telematics: email, web hosting, web services;
- Virtual private networks (VPN) to access data transmission networks.

Innovative technologies and increasing intellectual potential of the networks devices provide for new telecom services. At present, the services of the following segments are becoming of great demand:
- Video IP telephony;
- IPTV;
- Superimposed digital telephone networks;
- bitmap Call Center;
- Wi-Fi networks including roaming options;
- Content portal which provides access to diverse multimedia content.

Extended list of services is just one of the factors for successful operations of a telecom company. There are also some indispensable conditions, for example, flexibility of telecom provider business, agile and effective response to external changes. And in such a situation, billing system plays a key role, especially its readiness for further development.

Historically, billing systems provided back office support. Now this functionality is implemented in the first place, and enables telecom operators to register clients/users, account for financial records, perform authorization, billing and automatic access control. However, the application of billing system is not limited with the above functionalities. Contemporary billing systems are designed to register clients' requests to service support department, monitor available and occupied network resources, interact with diverse financial software of third-party providers. In other words, contemporary billing system focuses on the entire complex of organizational and accounting tasks.

To stay competitive, the telecom provider has to monitor trends of systems and technologies development. As for the billing system developers, they should not only monitor these trends but also adapt them in a functionality of the billing system.

Moreover, taking into consideration that it takes quite a time (sometimes months or even years) from launching the enhancements to their commercial implementation. So, such enhancements have to be proactive. Otherwise, the successful operator has to anticipate new trends and technologies to build complete solutions on their base before those novelties will be launched.

To summarize, the billing system Bill-Master is appeared to be exactly a product following the telecom development trends present on the Russian telecom market in late 90's of the last century.

Emergence of Bill-Master

During 8 years from the inception of billing and customer care (B&CC) system Bill-Master, there have been more than 180 installations and upgrades for Russia, CIS and foreign customers. Along with the improvement of the software source code and planned evolvement of the functionality, Bill-Master has implemented a good deal of enhancements and additions that meet specific customer requirements. Thus one can learn about market development and emergence of new trends by the enhancements made to the system. These updates distinguish one version from another and reflect the evolution of service providers' requirements.
Generally, emergence of complex commercial billing solutions related to agile exploitation of digital technologies in telecom industry. Reliable tools to monitor and register increasing volume of traffic were in need, while most of telecom operators designed proprietary billing systems at that time. However, operators with such an approach faced numerous obstacles in system development, service support and billing systems interfacing between operators and their partners.

As a result, software companies started to develop duplicated billing systems. Being installed and fine-tuned, such a system is easily adaptable to any network infrastructure of any provider. In 1999, the billing systems market in Russia were at the formation stage, and INLINE Technologies decided to develop their own solution - the telecom billing system "Bill-Master". The system was designed to rate and charge such services as Internet access through dial-up connections, Voice over IP, and telematics (email, web hosting, web services). The functionality of Bill-Master's original version was simple and contained the following features:
- automation of traffic rating (billing);
- charging of services based on their type and volume;
- integration with external financial systems.

Evolution of Bill-Master

Let's fast track through the main phases of Bill-Master evolution reflected in the version and functionality history.

v.1.0, 10/1999. Initial development of the billing system Bill-Master has been started. The billing system was designed to rate and charge typical telecommunication services rendered by telecom providers.

v.2.0, 06/2001. This version was distinguished with enhanced functionality for the billing of dedicated and dialup lines. The following modules were implemented: VoIP billing, prepaid card dealers, and SSG (Service Selection Gateway) module, which enables telecom operators to provide better flexibility of the services right up to building interactive portals with new services and capabilities based on a billing system. One of B&CC Bill-Master versions was localized into English making possible to deploy the billing system for international customers and enabling Russian customers to use English user interface. The support for DBMS Oracle8i or Oracle9i was implemented; the system source code was optimized; new analytical reports were added.

v.3.0, 07/2004. This version had completely redesigned the client/user and administrator interface. Administration functions of operators and users were further developed. Overall billing performance was improved due to reorganization of the data structure within the system. The following new modules were added: network inventory module, Multicast IPTV module. The concept of virtual billing was implemented enabling telecom provider to offer billing services to their partners and subdivisions on lease. New capabilities for marketing campaigns and bonus programs due to improved billing module were implemented, allowing for creation of flexible rate (billing) plans with extended discount criteria.

v.4.0, 11/2006. This version made possible setting the client/user information, arbitrary aggregation of CDR packets, and flexible identification of PSTN users. Updated integration capabilities with external financial software. With the development of this version, DBMS Oracle was selected as the only supported DBMS for further development (the company still provided technical support for previously deployed MySQL-based Bill-Master versions). This allowed re-allocating available resources and efforts reducing the amount of developed and supported program source code and implementing the Oracle binding mechanism to considerably increase database query processing rates from the system applications and consequently improve the performance of prepaid services. Billing functions for Wi-Max and Wi-Fi communication services were implemented.

v.4.2, 07/2007. This version has considerably enhanced functionality in client/user relations domain. As the client base grows and new types of services are rolled out, the primary requirements of telecom providers are performance and fault tolerance of the billing system. This release meets the above requirements in full: the fault tolerance of RADIUS server was increased; ISG/SSG performance was enhanced; and CDR packets processing and aggregation mechanism was improved. This version is fully integrated with the external payment systems, such as ASSIST, CyberPlat, OSMP, EleksNet, etc.

At present, the recently developed version of Bill-Master v.5.0 is passing the certification procedure. The new version is dramatically distinguished from predecessors. The fifth version will offer new and friendly user interface and crucially new functionalities which are matching contemporary development trends of telecom industry.

Why service providers need B&CC Bill-Master?

Recently, just a few full-scale billing systems are presented on the Russian telecom market. When choosing the billing system, service providers focus on such vital points as: does the system meet their unique requirements, and how do they benefit from the system's deployment.

First of all, Bill-Master provides a complete toolkit of functionalities needed for contemporary telecom service provider to manage financial and legal clients' relations, interaction with network equipment and supplementary accounting.

Secondly, B&CC Bill-Master runs under UNIX-like operating systems and interacts with proved DBMS solutions - Oracle and MySQL, - thus providing a high level of reliability. The diversity of telecommunication services and types of equipment result in the different methods of information collection. As B&CC Bill-Master employs interaction through the RADIUS protocol and import of CDR packets then the classic model of communication protocol - master/slave - was implemented in B&CC Bill-Master to increase RADIUS-server fault tolerance and to provide the reliable billing as a whole. Reliability of the system is also provided by the Oracle StandBy technology and multi-level backup system which provides security against extraordinary situations. Implemented in Bill-Master, the self-control mechanism can check in real time not only the efficiency of the system but also the accuracy of specific actions.

Thirdly, the modular structure of Bill-Master enables operators to organize and deploy such a solution that meets their unique requirements. As the business expands, new services are developed and rolled out; telecom operator can easily scale up the solution functionality by adding new modules without stopping the entire system. Furthermore, due to the modular architecture of the system, telecom operators of any size and financial resources could optimize their expenses by purchasing only the modules which they need to form their individual solution.

Fourthly, in the field of customer relations, Bill-Master provides a full toolkit to build effective relations and to keep the proper level of their loyalty, including such options as multi-currency (Bill-Master enables telecom provider to operate in different currencies), multi-language support (enables telecom providers to have access to B&CC system in different languages), and external payment system integration.

Fifth, when implementing the billing solution, a service provider may encounter additional requirements and tasks. In such a situation, the system can be easily updated because of the capabilities of operating system and the open source code. As a result, the service provider obtains solution which matches their unique business processes.

Finally, and probably the most importantly, goes the system scalability. When telecom operator's business enlarges, the scalability of the system becomes one of the key requirements to the network infrastructure management system of a service provider. The ability to use distributed model in Bill-Master enables service providers to upgrade the system and launch new services without stopping the entire system. Due to this approach the system is appropriate for service providers with both centralized and distributed organizational structure.

Project-specific system evolution

To see the phases of system evolution, let's consider the following example (abridged description):

Service provider X with distributed organizational structure (8 branches in different regions) renders diverse telecom services and runs different billing systems. This service provider needs integrated billing solution. The core of this solution is the convergent billing system with such key features as compatibility with the existing operators' systems and equipment, and opportunity to launch new services on the market.

Requirements specification

Any project starts from specification of requirements to software and hardware involved in the process of development and implementation of the solution. In this example, one of the requirements is employing of the "raw" technology based on Cisco ISG. The next requirement is the precise migration from legacy systems to the new solution.

Considering that the main condition of the project is to keep business integrity, this migration process implies full-scale migration of data used in legacy billing systems. In our example, this task is harder because we need to fulfill the migration from different incompatible billing systems into new data format which responds to developing complex solution.

The billing system functions are more binding to OSS/BSS functionalities in the network infrastructure of contemporary telecom provider. It means that the billing system isn't a stand-alone component provider's operations, but is the integral part of the entire solution.

Project scheduling

Having defined the requirements, let's go on to the next stage. Fulfillment of this project includes all typical stages of project planning such as scheduling, design, development/implementation and testing/debugging. In the considered example, all these requirements are more severe and extended because of distributed organizational structure of the provider.

At this stage we define all essential requirements to the system functionality (required modules) and to hardware-software complex where the system will operate.

The first phase of the project includes developing system integration with the provider's infrastructure. The provider's business will extend and increase and the infrastructure will inevitably extend and become more complicated, and after a time there will be a huge amount of separate systems which support provider's operations. One of the most essential and complex tasks is to provide correct interaction of newly developed system with existing solutions.

At the next phase we have to provide the system's reliability by ensuring proper functioning of rating and charging mechanism implemented in B&CC Bill-Master billing solution.

The third phase comprises the tasks concerning internal system functionality namely:
- updating the solution to meet unique provider's requirements (offering customized solution);
- re-designing the system architecture;
- revising database tables and source code in accordance with the data planned for the existing operator' infrastructure.

System design

The next step is to design the system, namely to provide its architectural concept including:
- to prepare system architectural solutions and to arrange data for all work packages;
- to determine operational requirements to billing mechanisms: backup features; advanced system performance;
- to design a test bench to fine-tune and upgrade the software for existing operator's equipment.

Development

The development process contains implementation and activation of modules as well as updating of the partnerships management system to ensure proper operation of the complete integrated solution.

Testing

The final solution is subject to extensive testing in the laboratory environment. This process involves participation of experienced team of engineers and developers that eventually guarantees proper operation of the system and reduces the time required for system deployment at the customer's facilities.

Full-scale software testing is an integral part of any project. This example includes the following phases of software testing. Module testing. Individual units of the software such as modules, functions or categories are tested. The goal is to reveal errors in a module and to validate that module is working properly and the system is ready for the next phase of development and tests. Integration testing is the second phase of the software testing. It's conducted to test a part of the system combining two and/or more modules. The purpose of the test is to search for defects related with the errors of interactions between modules.

System testing is performed on the complete system at the user interface level. The main task of this test is to detect bugs concerned with the entire system operation as follows: incorrect use of system resources; unpredicted data combination at user level; environment incompatibility; unpredictable use of scripts; missed or improper functionality; poor usability, etc.

Support

Service support starts after the system commissioning, and the service provider can choose convenient and flexible mode of system support.

So, taking into consideration the above example of billing solution, we can see that the system is evolving together with the requirements of service provider. As a result, the provider can deploy and operate the system which is tailored to their unique business processes and needs.

Dmitry Boginskiy, Director, Software Solutions Division, Inline Telecom Solutions
(Vek Kachestva Trade Magazine, N6 December, 2007)