The Conveniences Of Working With A Telecom OSS
Telecommunications has seen a lot of changes in the last few decades. What started off as a plain telephone system today is a big universe of voice, data and video all bundled in various ways to deliver the ultimate communications experience for the customer. As the telecommunication services get more and more varied and complex, the telecom billing software used to bill them also needs to keep pace. Unless the billing solutions are advanced enough, the service provider cannot really tap into the various services that modern technology can offer.
The demands of the customers vary from region to region. The customers in the developed nation are used to telephone lines and the next wave of internet access that followed. As a result, these customers are now looking to get voice, video and data services through a single connection. The service providers are also keen to deliver these bundled services to increase the ARPUs. The billing systems need to be able to track the usage of various services and bill them accordingly.
In the mobile phone domain, there are quite a few alternatives. The modern phones are mini computing machines which can support voice calls, messaging and even internet browsing and GPS. Different phone models have different features and hence different user traffic. The billing solutions need to adapt to these traffic patterns and bill accordingly.
Lastly, in the developing nations with fast growing mobile markets, the operators come out with offers for very short time durations like over the weekend. In such cases, the billing solution needs to be able to adapt to the ever changing rates and the fickle needs of the customers. This again requires a robust billing system.
Now that we understand the demands from a billing solution, we can look at how these solutions work. The sales person would activate an account based on the services subscribed by the customer. The telecom billing OSS will now interact with the network to measure the usage patterns of the user and apply the respective rates. Typically, the billing is batch processed on particular dates to keep the computations relatively simple.
After the billing is calculated, the bills need to be created and sent to the customer. The first challenge is that the customer must receive the billing information. Traditionally, postal services used to deliver the bills. Today with the internet, the billing information can be obtained online also.
The collection of payments is vital for the company as that brings in the money to sustain the operations. There are many avenues through which the customers could pay the bills as per their convenience. Some people may prefer to use checks, others pay online, and a few others may pay by cash at the collection centers. The billing solution needs to consolidate all these avenues and maintain the right record.
Thus the significance of telecom billing system is very clear. It must capture the information from various sources based the varied solutions the customers opt for. The telecom billing OSS must also bill them properly and update the payment details correctly. It is truly a complex but vital cog in modern telecommunications.
