Telecom Billing Solution - The Importance Of Telecom OSS

July 28th, 2010

The Telecom billing solution is a important component in the set of systems that modern telecom services providers need to deliver the service. It has very little to do with actually delivering the service or maintaining the service, but a lot to do with collecting the revenues that keep the ISP running. With a wide range of service offerings across various media, flexible and robust systems are useful.

Billing systems have an important task to play in all kinds of services on offer, regardless of how simple or complex it may be. PSTN phone lines have been around for ages, so billing their usage should be straight forward. This is true as long as we do not include things like long distance and international calls. Different areas have different rates and they need to be billed properly. Similarly, when a customer moves operators and wants to retain their phone number, that throws up a new billing challenge.

In the developed world, it is not uncommon for the new mobile cellular data plans to come with some data limit followed by billing for every additional kilobyte that is used in the network. In the developing nations, there are mobile pre-paid plans that run for a couple of weeks and are then stopped. Keeping track of all these plans and services and ensuring that every one of the transactions is accounted for is just what billing solutions are designed to do.

While ISPs may be convinced to go for a telecom billing solution, given its benefits, it is not a simple step. Developing and deploying a robust billing solution requires some investment and lot of planning. Everything must be done right - from the correct software to bill the customer to setting up a team to address customer billing issue, all need to be implemented.

First it is the telecom OSS hardware and a stable, scalable and flexible software for accurate billing. The next is to determine billing cycles. Really good billing systems may be able to maintain individual billing cycles, but the most common ones tend to have pre-defined billing cycles that need to be agreed on.

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 Billing System 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 Billing System has to be well thought of and just investing in software is not enough.

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