Industries » Industry Overview » Billing/Mediation

Billing/Mediation

Billing is an extremely critical domain of any service provider. If one cannot bill customers, it directly affects the bottom line. In today’s convergent world it is becoming more and more difficult for the service providers to bill their customers, due to disparate servers, protocols and services. The challenges are numerous, including providing single bills, adapting to different charging models, collecting payment, managing delinquent customers and G/L reporting etc.

HSC can help in building an end to end billing solution which includes integration of the billing system with ordering systems to create customer accounts, manage billing catalog, mediation system to collect the usage date, taxation system for tax calculation and tax reporting, payment gateways for collecting payments both (online and offline) and financial system to reports the revenue.

In addition, HSC can help in building various subscribers reports, revenue leakage detection system, and fraud management systems.

HSC offers Development, deployment rollouts and management of COTS and customized billing and mediation systems for core telecom, satcom and datacom networks.

White Paper/Open Sources related to Billing/Mediation

Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 Abstract: This paper explains and discusses the current transition mechanisms to IPv6 and their applicability to different network scenario. Also discussed is the evolutionary work being done in different IETF working groups to address new realities in the IPv6 deployment. Read more...
Making Agile Work on Offshore Development Abstract: HSC recently participated in the prestigious Project Management Leadership (PML) 2011 event where we presented our experiences in successfully applying Agile methodologies to large projects executed offshore from the customer site.The paper was selected as a runner up in the abovementioned event. Abstract: Other than understanding the organizational and cultural aspects related to application of Agile methods, modification and adaptation of Agile practices to suit the organization’s business context and existing systems and processes is imperative for making Agile work. Read more...
A unique project management model for end-end delivery Abstract: In the today’s market scenario of intense competition, the organizations face the challenges of low price and high quality. The traditional model of separate teams for delivery puts additional burden on these factors adding to additional pressure. The key to success is knowledge re-use wherever possible and spreading the roles and responsibilities across the different delivery phases. The intent of the paper is to highlight one such practice for handling these challenges. Read more...
Approach for Integration of 3rd party Nodes with Proprietary OSS Abstract: For efficient Operations, network elements of a Telecom Network (e.g. Cellular Network) are integrated with Operations support Systems (OSS). Typically the OSS comes from the vendor supplying the key Access and Core network nodes of the network as these nodes are well integrated with the proprietary OSS. Read more...
Resuable Network Management Components Abstract: Every equipment manufacturer requires a solution for the element management of the equipment. Traditionally, an EMS is built custom to the requirements of the network elements that it has to manage. When the equipment manufacturer builds a new product line or upgrades the existing one, the cost to port / re-engineer the existing EMS becomes a major hurdle for the change.Reusable NM Components ( RNMC) provides an easy solution to this problem. Read more...
Building SNMP Trap Receiver Using Apache MINA Abstract: SNMP Trap is a message initiated by an Network Element to notify the Management Station of a significant event. Trap Receiver play a very crucial role in Fault Management Applications, by receiving and parsing the bytes into meaningful messages. In this article we shall discuss the implementation of a SNMP Trap receiver using Apache MINA (Multipurpose Infrastructure for Network Applications). Read more...
Enterprise Architecture for NGN Service Providers Abstract: This paper aims to introduce generic enterprise architecture for integrating the OSS/BSS systems for a telecom service provider. The paper talks about the proposed architecture, its benefits and how it overcomes the limitations of the legacy OSS/BSS architectures. Read more...

Case studies related to Billing/Mediation

Oracle BRM System implementation Abstract: BRM system implementation provided billing System automation involving various Business processes. It involved creation of billing catalog which included basic plans to complex plans, automatic creation of billing accounts based on automatic interface with file based ordering, included automatic purchase of the billing plans for the subscriber based on the input feeds, involved rating and billing customization as per the client requirements, automatic invoice generation and presentation, payment collection. This BRM implementation also involved integration with payment gateway to collection online and batch payments and integration with taxation system to apply correct taxation on the customer’s invoice based on customer’s location. This implementation also provided creation of a website to allow CSRs and end users to collection of payments, online invoices, update of billing address and payment method etc. Customer Benefits: Read more...
Automatic Order Management system Abstract: This implementation of BRM system involved following functionality Automated order Management which included integration with ordering system. This included automatic account creation upon request from ordering system, purchasing of billing plan and handling of seasonal suspensions and terminations. Implementation of collections process which included identification of delinquent accounts, sending dunning letters and emails, initiation of automatic service lock and unlock, termination of services, referral to collections agency and automatic write-off of A/R if not collected. Interface with IVR System included creation of a JMS based wrapper over billing system to provide capabilities like getting account balance, last statement balance, last payment, collecting payments and changing payment method. Customer Benefits: Read more...
Directway Support System (DSS) Abstract: Directway Support System (DSS) is an Operations and Business Support System for process automation for providing satellite based broadband services. It has the following functions Ordering Provisioning/Installation Billing Customer Care Self Care Portal The customer had a requirement to carry out complete release testing , periodically available from their development team, to ensure its flawless working before deployment in live network. Read more...
Reusable NM Components Abstract: Every equipment manufacturer requires a solution for the element management of the equipment. Traditionally, an EMS is built custom to the requirements of the network elements that it has to manage. When the equipment manufacturer builds a new product line or upgrades the existing one, the cost to port / re-engineer the existing EMS becomes a major hurdle for the change. Read more...
OSS integration for broadband service provider Abstract: The broadband service provider required to manage and monitor a satellite based network. Key business needs were as follows: Order handling Deals / offerings management Service management Service activation Fault management Event correlation On top-level system was designed as follows: J2EE/EJB based online transaction processing application was developed for order handling, service activation and deals / offerings management hp OVO based solution was developed for service management, by customizing OVO templates hp NNM based EMS was developed for standard infrastructure elements A custom EMS was develop for network management of specialized satellite terminals A top-level NMS was implemented using SMARTS, for event correlation of the entire system Operation staff was informed via SMS and emails when any problem occurred in the network. Read more...
NMS for a Wimax / WiFi network Abstract: Key business need was to leverage today's best of the breed "off-the shelf" products, and lay the foundation for a next generation AI based NMS Solution with multi-vendor and multi-platform capability. HSC evaluated best of breed "off-the shelf" NMS products like Netcool, Openview, SMARTS, Voyence, InfoVista, ARS, OmniCenter Selection of products was based on following parameters: Maturity of the product Scalability of the product w.r.t. Read more...
CPE Agent Development Abstract: The need was to develop a CPE agent compliant to TR-069 and TR-098 specifications for management by ACS. CPE agent was required to facilitate management of TR-069 based accessible parameters (TR-106) and support data model for provisioning of a voice-over-IP (VoIP) CPE device (TR-104). A CPE agent was developed in compliance to TR 069, TR 104 and TR 106 specifications. Salient features of the CPE Agent are follows: Initial CPE configuration, Re-provisioning at any subsequent time, Vendor-specific configurations. Status and performance monitoring of the CPE. File download initiation, dynamic notifications. The solution supports: All mandatory Events Notifications. All mandatory SOAP based RPC support. HTTP message exchange between CPE and ACS Server using Secured Transport (SSL 3.0 /TLS 1.0) and X.509 certificate verifications. Customer Benefits: Specification based agent allows for extensible and flexible design. Many companies and operators have adopted TR-069. Read more...