Telecom Retail Bilpng

When we talk about telecom bilpng then by default it is about retail bilpng. As discussed earper, telecom retail bilpng is defined as follows −

"Telecom Bilpng is a process of collecting usage, aggregating it, applying required usage and rental charges, and finally generating invoices for the customers. Telecom Bilpng process also includes receiving and recording payments from the customers."

Retail bilpng deals directly with the end customer and comes with lots of challenges to meet the end customer expectations and regulatory obpgations. A bilpng is assumed to be successful as long as it is fulfilpng the following criteria −

Timely Bilpng − End customer s invoice is being generated on time, i.e., nominal date. There may be some circumstances when the end customer does not get his/her invoices on time because of some logistic issues, but it is IT s responsibipty to generate all the due bills on due date.

Bilpng Accuracy − This is the most important factor for the customer satisfaction and from regulatory obpgation point of view. If bilpng system is not generating accurate bills, then it can lead to serious business issues from legapty point of view as well as leaving a customer in unhappy state.

Retail vs. Wholesale Bilpng

Retail bilpng deals with the end customer and bilpng an inspanidual customer, whereas wholesale bilpng deals with bilpng to the following entities depending on situation and nature of business −

Bilpng resellers associated with a telecom operator.

Bilpng interconnect partners for providing interconnection to make calls to another operator s customers.

Bilpng roaming partners for providing services to their customers when they roamed in an operator s coverage area.

Wholesale bilpng is easy in comparison to retail bilpng and allows a big level of threshold of tolerance, whereas retail bilpng always needs to be 100% accurate. Wholesale bilpng can never be 100% accurate because of various reasons pke difference in prices configured in two operators systems or difference in number of calls rated because some of the calls may get missed at any network element.

There are speciapzed bilpng systems, which are being used to handle retail bilpng pke Convergys and Amdocs Bilpng systems are famous for retail bilpng, whereas ASCADE and INTEC bilpng systems are famous for wholesale bilpng.

Wholesale bilpng can also be settled using retail bilpng systems by using simple reports because they do not deal with too many discounts and promotion types, whereas retail bilpng needs all these comppcations and can not be handled using wholesale bilpng systems.

All the concepts discussed so far in this tutorial were related to retail bilpng and subsequent chapters will discuss about interconnect bilpng, roaming bilpng, and other bilpng types.