Telecom Billing Solution - The Importance Of Telecom Billing Solution

Aug.21, 2010 in Computers

The telecom domain is a very exciting area now a days. We now have everything from a simple phone line to mobile cellular phones. Today with so many offerings and bundling options, customers have the freedom to choose what they want and how they use the services. As an ISP it is important that regardless of the customer usage, every byte that travels through the network is accounted for. This is the importance of Telecom billing solution.

In voice services, things look very straight forward and we have standardized rates almost everywhere with unlimited local calling. But a simple service like phone can have other complexities like long distance charges and local number portability wherein you switch operators and want to retain the number, among other things. These may not look daunting, but they are vital for the ISP to remain profitable. Robust billing systems can track these and bill accordingly.

The more modern solutions, like cellular services, have even more complexities in offerings. In developed nations, the introduction of 3G services has meant that mobile networks are now being used for both voice and data services. The rates for both are different and so are their usages. In the developing nations, there are multiple short term and long term plans for plain 2G voice services too. The billing systems need to address all these variations.

While the importance of telecom billing solutions is clear, their deployment needs to be looked at in more detail. There are many aspects of a proper billing solution that need to be considered. A standard billing solution will encompass everything from hardware to customer support - the complete cycle.

Getting good hardware fast enough and reliable enough to run good software is a great starting point. The next is the telecom OSS that will be tracking all the usages and billing accordingly. The third aspect is the billing cycle. While ideally it would great to have individual customer billing cycles, it may not be a practical solution. Most billing solutions adopt the batch processing approach; you determining the billing cycles is important.

Another equally important part of the billing solution is distributing the bills to the customers and collecting their payments. The bill distribution can be the traditional printed bills or the newer online bills. Either way, the bill information needs to reach the user well in advance. The next step is to facilitate the collection of bill payments. Drop boxes, auto payments, tie ups with banks and online are some options.

Finally, is the customer support on the billing queries. It is not surprising that most customers get queries on the billing details as they feel over charged. A good support base is required, one that can handle all these queries and settle the issues amicably with the customers.

All in all, Telecom OSS is vital for modern telecom services providers. With the varied customer requirements and market demands of variations in plans, a robust billing system is mandatory to track usage, bill customers and collect payments. As an ISP, the whole Telecom OSS has to be well thought of and just investing in software is not enough.