Course 2200: IP Billing Fundamentals

Converged telecommunication billing services stand on the verge of radical change. The old rules of circuit switched networks do not apply in the Internet Protocol (IP) world. With the advent of more complex types of applications and services, the usage details required to bill activity must therefore be more dynamic.

This course looks into the question of which methods to use in managing and exchanging those measures and uncovers the issues, challenges and opportunities burgeoning IP services bring to our existing billing systems.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Introduction
• Defining IP Telephony and IP Billing
• Challenges of IP Billing
• QoS and Billing
• Market Forecast

Introduction to IP billing

• Definitions
• Concepts & terminology
• The move from circuit switched to IP networks
• Scope of IP services
• IP standards and regulations

IP Services

• IP-Based Billing Defined
• Segmenting IP Services
• Demand Spirals Upward
• Most Popular Services
• Web Surfing
• Sending E-mail
• Receiving E-mail
• Internet Telephony
• Internet Chat
• Network News
• Personal Web Pages
• Content Hotel for Streaming Data
• Virtual Private Intranet
• Directory Service
• Future Services
• Multimedia Telephony
• Unified Messaging

The Evolution of IP billing

• ISP billing
• Web hosting
• Revenue share models
• Mobile commerce

Bandwidth and Priority

• The Internet as the Medium
• Dramatic Growth in Average User Bandwidth
• Packet-Switched versus Circuit-Switched Networks
• Flexibility of IP Billing
• Batch versus Real-Time System
• Pricing Differential
• Disparate Quality of Voice Communications
• Evolution of IP Billing
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Internet Usage Records
• Billing of Diverse Services
• Pros and Cons of Different Types of IP Billing
• Technical Issues
• Internet Gatekeeper
• IP System Architecture
• Inter-Carrier Settlements
• A Review of IP Billing's Strengths and Weaknesses

Revenue streams

• IP revenue models
• Advertising
• Convergence

The end to end IP billing process

• IP mediation
• The new IP interfaces
• IPDR Internet Protocol Detail Record:
• The organization, standards and specification
  
• Extraction and presentation of content
  
• Event record completion, repair and enhancement
  
• Quality and Grade of Service
• Recording
• Monitoring
• Billing
• Compensation
• Interoperability between circuit switched and IP networks Rating
• By flat rate and usage
• By content
• By volume
• By access point name (APN)
• By location
• By revenue share
• "Always on" billing
• Billing for content and transport
• Settlement for IP services
• CRM in the IP world

Mediation and Event Processing

• Defining the range of measured network events  voice; page/SMS; data streams, etc.
• Explaining the key information required for each measured option
• Coordinating network changes with billing
• Audit procedures that ensure
• Successful network changes

An Introduction To Billing Mediation

• What is Billing Mediation?
• Examining the drivers for billing mediation
• New technologies, trends and services which make billing mediation both more difficult and more important
• WAP, SMS, EMS, MMS, UMTS, IP, GPRS
• Real time billing
• Content based pricing
• Volume/usage based pricing

The Billing Mediation Process Today

• Identifying the different possible sources of usage data
• Examining the size and complexity of common CDR data structures
• Tracing the mediation process for different types or traffic
• Acquiring the usage data: the call data collection process
• Profile matching
• Pattern recognition
• Making a common logical record format
• Auditing the mediation process
• Highlighting the limitations of the current billing mediation process
• An Overview of Mediation Platforms and Products
• Examining a generic framework of a mediation platform architecture
• Identifying the interfaces to other billing processes
• Identifying key mediation suppliers and vendors
• Comparing current mediation software products
• Multiservice mediation systems
• Examining different mediation implementation strategies
• Outsourcing vs in-house solutions
• Selecting a mediation system
• Identifying the requirements for the mediation system
• Pre-paid
• Legacy systems
• Understanding The Relationship Of Mediation With Other Network Processes
• Examining the interfaces between the mediation platform and the network management, service management, customer care and decision support systems
• Coping With The Additional Challenges of IP Mediation
• How is mediation for IP different from mediation for voice traffic?
• Identifying the challenges
• Lack of standards
• Coping with dynamic IP addresses
  
• Usage (volume) based billing for IP services
• Collecting IP billing information (IPDRs) from routers and servers
• Examining the hardware and software requirements for IP mediation
  
• How will new software and equipment integrate with your legacy mediation platform?
• Upgrading Your Mediation Processes To Enable Real Time Billing
  
• Understanding why and when real time billing may be required
• Hot billing and fraud management
• What added requirements will real time billing place on your mediation system?
• Rapid data consolidation
• Real time mediation
• Determining which billing data you should process in real time - and which you should not
• Future Developments in Wireless Billing Mediation
  
• Forecasting future mediation needs - How does the increasing complexity of services impact the mediation process?
  
• Billing for content
• Examining the mediation challenges associated with GPRS and UMTS
• Fully convergent mediation platform

The Future of IP Billing

• Future services
• The impact of UMTS and 3G
• Cable and Satellite Operators
• Content and applications
• Future billing and settlement models

Some of the software providers

• Amdocs
• Digiquant
• Lucent
• MindCTI
• Portal Software
• Sema
• XACCT