OCs: the key to winning 3G by carriers

Prepared by: China HP Communications and Media Industry Consulting and Integration Division

The approaching 3G undoubtedly brings unlimited business opportunities to China telecom operators, but it is accompanied by a dramatic increase in the complexity of backend support. How to Use 3G opportunities to innovate business, products, services and marketing, how to control user credit in real time, reduce arrearage, reduce bad debt costs, and effectively control operation risks, how can users flexibly switch payment methods, real-time notification of consumption information, multi-user, cross-service bundling, and a series of innovative value-added services? Therefore, a real-time, integrated, and flexible Billing Platform will undoubtedly become the key for telecom operators to plan ahead, effectively and quickly provide 3G services, and seize the lead.

Integration: supports both current and future services

3G technology allows mobile and fixed communications to be integrated, and telecom operators will break the traditional business division. For example, China Telecom cannot do mobile communications, and China Mobile cannot do broadband services. To carry out these new services, carriers must support their billing systems. In addition, 3G features the convergence of voice, video, and data transmission, so it has a wide range of business, product innovation, and marketing innovation space. This also puts pressure on the billing system. In the past, the independent Billing Platform established by operators based on the traditional business division was obviously difficult to meet the above requirements.

The carrier's original billing system generally belongs to different platforms for different services, for example, PHS prepaid services are the responsibility of PHS intelligent network, fixed-line prepaid services are the responsibility of fixed-line intelligent network, and ADSL prepaid services are also the responsibility of specialized platforms, different services of the same network are the responsibility of the same intelligent network but different network elements. For example, the voice business is the responsibility of an independent platform, the color bell platform is responsible for the color bell platform, and the SP Business is the responsibility of the SP platform. As a result, end users may suffer a lot of inconvenience: for example, the same user cannot obtain unified points from fixed phone, broadband, PHS and other value-added services, or convert them into a bill. The subsequent paid platforms of operators will be "overloaded" with the full development of new businesses. In the face of a large number of products and businesses, they will not be able to carry out the most flexible combination marketing. In the 3G era, the traditional "chimney-based" billing model obviously needs to be fundamentally upgraded to support the product, business, and marketing innovation of operators.

The HP online billing system (OCs) solution supports the full-service development of operators in the 3G era, and manages the price approval and balance in a unified manner, fundamentally solved the difficulties of pre-paid businesses in implementing multi-service bundling and Business Package Combinations in the past, and achieved real integration. OCS not only enables online billing of 3G data services, value-added services, and traditional services, but also enables integrated billing of pre-payment and post-payment. In other words, after the OCS solution is successfully applied, the operator is truly capable of providing a 3G business support system-billing.

Diagram of the HP online billing system (OCs) Solution

Real-time: reduces risks and increases customer satisfaction

3G technology provides telecom operators with a broad space for business innovation. Taking Value-added services as an example, 3G mobile phone search, instant messaging, video text messages, location navigation, online games, mobile TV/movies, on-demand music, visual conferences, mobile games, MMS, WAP browsing, downloading, etc., it is suitable for pre-paid businesses. Some businesses use a large amount at a time, causing a high risk of arrearage. Objectively speaking, real-time billing is required to control risks in real time. Of course, from the user's point of view, they do not want to suddenly receive a bill that exceeds the unexpected amount after using a service; or, if they are not clear, they will actually cause a malicious arrears. Therefore, it is important for users to query data in real time and receive real-time notifications from operators.

Based on the advanced architecture, the HP OCs solution supports real-time billing, real-time query, and real-time notification. In addition, OCs can achieve unified management: unified customer view, unified customer bills, and unified credit control, so as to make complex charges and customer relationship management more intuitive and efficient. Operators can manage user credit in real time to minimize the risk of arrearage. Meanwhile, real-time queries and real-time notifications make operators' services more humane and greatly improve customer satisfaction-as more and more information services are used by users, they may not be able to know and control their fees at any time. In the 3G era, market competition will increase along with market opportunities. The key to winning users is 01:10.

Function architecture of the HP online billing system (OCs) Solution

Flexibility: Improves innovative marketing capabilities of telecom operators

Traditional billing methods bring inconvenience to telecom operators and users. For carriers, if traditional billing methods are used for business bundling and various promotions, they will not only have a long cycle, but also lack flexibility. In the 3G era, various innovative businesses are widely used, which will undoubtedly become a shortcoming. For users, the service satisfaction will be greatly reduced due to the inconvenience of switching between pre-payment and post-payment. OCs can better solve this problem.

Based on the comprehensive research and analysis of online billing solutions at home and abroad, hp ocs is based on international standards such as 3GPP and IETF, and based on the business needs of China's telecom business, the design and development of the entire business of China Telecom's HP online billing solution, so it is quite open and flexible. The specific manifestation is that HP OCs achieves flexible switching between prepayment and postpaid payment methods, and achieves the integrated billing of prepaid and postpaid services, it provides a more flexible and open pre-payment service support platform and flexible switching of payment methods.

In addition, HP OCs also complements the online billing system (OCs) and offline billing system (hot-billing, the integrated accounting system processes and manages the output of OCS and hot-billing. Therefore, this provides a support platform for carriers to launch bundling and promotions with various characteristics, making their services, services, and marketing more flexible. Of course, in this case, users can enjoy a better service experience and flexibly select and switch payment methods as well as operators' products and services.

To win the future, telecom operators must win 3G first, but 3G. A real-time, integrated and flexible online billing system is indispensable and an inevitable trend. Not long ago, the online billing solution (OCs) successfully implemented by Hewlett-Packard for China Telecom Anhui company gave full play to the above three features. With reference to 3GPP, HP OCs has many years of experience in the billing field of the telecom industry and is a set of integrated core business support systems based on the actual situation of China Telecom Market, it can help telecom operators effectively manage user credit, control arrearage, reduce operational risks, establish a pre-paid post-payment integrated billing support environment, achieve network, support and terminal integration, and improve customer experience, improve the competitiveness of enterprises in the market.

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This article is the author of the original, if you need to reprint please indicate the source, Author: Jiang Tao, towerjt@gmail.com tower.javaeye.com

 

With the official opening of the 3G network in China, OCS is no longer a concept. The so-called concept is also a search engine on the internet. If you are interested, you can search for it, I am talking about it at will. It may be more acceptable for beginners.

Why is OCs an online billing system called online billing?Article(Introduction to the billing and accounting system) people should be impressed. In some places, this may happen: "when there is one dollar left on your card, as long as you don't stop the phone, you may be able to play for a long time, a long time! ".

Why is this happening? Because our traditional billing system is based on CDR files, it is offlineHot BillingOf course, I don't know whyHot BillingInstead of spicy.Billing. In short, this billing method must wait for you to stop the phone and the switch will generate a ticket before the billing system can handle it. This will lead to the so-called "last-minute overdue payment" problem. If the technology is not available, the operator can only solve this problem from the operational perspective. Many carriers use to limit your outgoing calls when your account balance is not large, which of course can solve this problem to a large extent, however, it does not have much use for real malicious arrearage, while greatly reducing the user experience.

In this case, the intelligent network billing system is born. The Intelligent Network Billing system is a very powerful system, and a large number of shenzhouxing systems in the early and present were based on the intelligent network system. He is an online billing system that deals directly with vswitches. See the following scenarios:

1,You make a call,

2,The switch immediately informs the intelligent network system of the Call details,

3,The Intelligent Network judges the balance. For example, if you have 1 yuan, you are now playing a local call. If you have 6 cents a minute, the intelligent network will tell the switch to give the call for 1 minute, then you lock your 6-cent authorization. In this way, you can only make one minute of calls. Once a minute arrives, the call will be cut off immediately.

4,After the call is over, the switch tells the intelligent network that the call is over. The intelligent network deducts the fee and releases the authorization according to the actual call duration.

After reading the above introduction, a seamless system was born. Unfortunately, the intelligent network system has several inherent shortcomings. First, most of the providers of intelligent network systems are telecom equipment vendors represented by China. When they make billing rules, they are not as complicated as the boss system's billing system. The reason is very simple. First, they are not good at this field. Second, complicated rules will inevitably increase the complexity of the system. Under certain hardware conditions, it is a very serious problem to satisfy the fast access rate. This is an online system. Once performance or functional problems occur, the user cannot make a call! To some extent, online and offline billing start points are different.

With the increasing development of China Mobile and the increasingly deteriorating market competition, and the early network investment has been withdrawn, the balance between the operator's arrears control and Business Development has gradually declined, the operator no longer influences the system's support for fees to control a small amount of overdue payments. Even though the intelligent network system has done a lot of work on the configuration of charges, it still cannot meet the needs of market competition. In addition, the operator will find that it takes much less time and effort for the boss manufacturer to change a requirement than the intelligent network vendor to change the requirement, the intelligent network system is no longer used in many places.

Is it so peaceful? 3G, or 3G! In the 3G era, if you use this offline billing method, there may be a huge risk of arrears to operators. In the 3G era, the operator's system is more and more like an operating platform, and a large number of value-added services such as VOD run on it. If the operator does not have a good balance, the user watched a video and the content provider had to collect money from the telecom operator. Even if the copyright was purchased by the telecom operator, the cost was still large, so online billing is imperative. Boss vendors entering the 3G era certainly have to keep pace with the times, so the concept of OCS, integrated billing, and so on has become popular before 3G.

Finally, another difference between the intelligent network system and OCS is described here. From the above scenario, we can see that the intelligent network system will authorize all the account balance for one business. For example, if your account has 50 yuan, you can call 6 cents a minute, the Intelligent Network performs an authorization of 49 8 hairs and informs the switch that the user can call for 83 minutes. This calculation method is called the time length Inverse calculation, which means that the time length is calculated by the balance inverse.

In today's business concurrency, you can watch videos on your mobile phone and send a text message to participate in the lucky draw tomorrow after the 3G business starts, at this time, if the account balance is fully authorized during the call, the subsequent two businesses will not be able to proceed. OCS uses a time-length positive calculation method or interactive billing method to solve this problem. It is clear to use a scenario to describe it:

1,You make a call

2,The switch informs the OCS System of the Call details (or forwarded through the intelligent network system ).

3,The OCS system finds that the account balance is 50 yuan. If you call a phone call again, we will authorize you 6 yuan and tell the switch to give you another 10 minutes. At this time, your account balance is still 44 yuan, then you can do other business.

4,After 10 minutes, you have not got on the server yet. The time for the switch to request the OCS system is repeated until you terminate the service or the remaining balance is insufficient to continue the service.