Lecture
Billing in telecommunications — a set of processes and solutions at communications enterprises responsible for collecting information on the use of telecommunications services, rating them, issuing invoices to subscribers, and processing payments . A billing system — application software that supports billing business processes.
Billing is the most important component of the activity of any commercial communications operator, regardless of the type of telecommunications: fixed-line and mobile operators, internet telephony, virtual operators, internet providers, transit digital traffic operators, digital television providers — none of them can exist without billing, thanks to which invoices are issued to consumers of their services and the economic side of their activities is ensured.
For billing systems in telecommunications, Russian also uses the term automated settlement system (ASR), a term in particular used in official documents of the Ministry of Communications of Russia, which mandate compulsory certification of billing systems.
Billing functions at an enterprise are grouped into three main blocks: settlement operations, information service, and financial service.
In a broad sense, when billing is considered in integration with revenue management (Billing and revenue management), additional functions are singled out, such as revenue assurance, subscriber profitability management, and subscriber fraud management
Within the settlement operations block, functions such as usage determination (for example, obtaining detailed call information from switches, processing traffic consumption data from switching equipment, receiving data from the mediation system), usage rating (determining the settlement characteristics of consumption data), aggregation of ratings and generation of subscriber charges, calculation of taxes, discounts, additional charges, adjustments, issuance of invoices for payment, ensuring delivery of or access to invoices for subscribers, and management of subscriber personal accounts are singled out .
The implementation of the settlement block can differ substantially both for different types of communications and in different subscriber relationship models.
Prepaid (advance payment) — a settlement model with subscribers and agents that involves depositing funds in advance to one's personal account with the communications service operator, which are subsequently spent on paying for the services received. Prepaid settlement systems, as a rule, keep records in real time, directly managing the process of service provision; once the lower threshold of funds in the counterparty's account is reached, the mode of service provision may be changed (up to complete termination). The amount of funds in the account, the duration of maintaining a positive balance, and the size and regularity of deposits can serve as a rating parameter when calculating the cost, quality, and quantity of services provided.
The functional capabilities for supporting real-time restriction of access to communication services under the prepaid settlement model are sometimes called hot billing.
Postpaid (payment after the fact) — a settlement model in which the operator first provides services to the subscriber or agent under a contract concluded with them, and only then performs rating and issues invoices for payment. The rating and invoicing process is scheduled and regular, and usually covers a calendar period of time agreed in the contract (most often — a month, sometimes — a week, a quarter, or a year). The counterparty is obliged to pay the amount of the issued invoice within the period of time agreed in the contract; in the event of late payment, the debt-collection methods specified in the contract are applied to them, as part of accounts-receivable collection processes.
Information service includes functions for supporting operational information about subscribers, about products and services, including their tariffs, restrictions, possible combinations, as well as billing configuration data in general (for example, settlement and invoicing schedules, management of subscriber notification events, audit and data-aging settings, permissible subscriber characteristics) .
Financial service covers the functions of processing payments, reconciling them against issued invoices and services, managing subscriber accounts receivable and the process of collecting them, and processing taxation data .
Convergent billing (from the Latin convergo — "I converge") — billing oriented toward issuing unified invoices to subscribers under conditions of multiservice networks and various settlement models.
A convergent billing system processes data on a wide range of services provided in a unified manner, ensuring a single personal account and single invoices for payment for each subscriber, both regardless of the set of services used by the subscriber (these can simultaneously be various fixed-line telephony, mobile communication, data transmission, television, and content services), and regardless of the principle by which charges for them are calculated (services can be purchased both as prepaid and paid on contractual principles)
The annual volume of the global billing systems market for 2007 was estimated at 6 billion dollars, and its growth was forecast to reach a level of 7.2 billion dollars by 2012 , with the market by field of application broken down into the following components:
According to 2010 estimates, in the global billing systems market by vendor, Amdocs leads with a share of 27%, Huawei has 8% of the market, Oracle and Convergys[en] each have 6%, Ericsson (including LHS Telekommunikation[en] , acquired in 2007) and Intec[en][10][1 each have 5%
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