i-conX

As operators roll out shiny new services to tempt customers, so the worry over declining voice revenues will ( - according to theory!) melt away to reveal a brave, and profitable, new world where customers embrace the very latest innovations in content.

The complexities of such service innovations place radical new demands upon interconnect billing systems, and hence it is worth taking stock of the intricacies of interconnect billing when it comes to more complex services.

If the person receiving the content is on a different network from the person sending it, an interconnect billing transaction will be generated and an interconnect billing solution will be needed to bill it.

Rating for Content

The move to delivering content requires some specific rating functionality to be added to traditional voice-based systems. There are a number of interconnect billing rules for content including rating by :

* Minute or event
* Kilobyte or megabyte
* Messaging type

Minute or Event

Billing by the minute is standard for wholesale voice traffic, but it is not usually a suitable measure for data. Per minute billing is, however, often used for rating WiFi access. Like SMS interconnect charges, many settlement payments for content are also based on a flat fee per event (eg. a fee per news flash).

Interconnect systems are used to dealing with network events that have a clearly defined start and end time. Some services will be provided on an ‘always on' basis, such as GPRS or broadband-based services. The billing arrangements are likely to be based on a flat charge for a given period, such as per month, for the Ôalways-on' service with additional charges for individual network events.

Kilobyte or Megabyte

Business customers using their mobiles to connect laptops to the internet are often billed by the volume of kilobytes they upload and download. For wholesale, it is a natural way to bill other carriers for this type of service as they are primarily paying for the use of a network that is measured in bandwidth.

Messaging Type

Mobile customers often opt to send or receive content in a particular format. The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) has defined a set of MMS services and proposed a pricing structure of one-off payments for each of them, based around 5 basic categories, from simple ÔSMS Test' through ÔImage Rich' (31-100kB) topping out at ÔVideo Rich' (100-300kB). These, when combined with transport costs (charged at 6 + (0.8 per kB), could produce a real-world price. In this interesting matrix, image is five times more valuable than text, and video is twice as valuable as image.

Other factors to consider

There are often several parties involved in a content transaction - the service provider and the people who collect the money from the customer being just two potential parties. In certain scenarios, customers on other networks are also able to access the provider's services, creating further billing scenarios.

In these cases, a number of different parties may need to be billed, told what to bill (ie. sent a closed reconciliation report) or have a bill reconciled for an individual event and several rules and rates may need to be applied.

Revenue share agreements are likely to be more complex. For example, the revenue share percentage could vary depending on the value of the transaction and on whether the customer is paying via their phone bill (a higher percentage to cover risk) or via their credit card.

It isn’t going to get any easier

Some content providers will pay for content to be delivered (for example an advertisement sent to a handset from a nearby store when the customer is in a shopping mall), others will be paid for providing content (for example, where a game is downloaded to a handset).

The growth in content services is likely to create more sophisticated rating rules for different products or services taking into account such factors as format, location, speed of delivery and QoS. Customers may exercise choices between different levels of quality, content, ownership etc., all factors influencing how the interconnect transaction is created, rated and billed.

The evolution of FMC and the replacement of PSTN networks with IMS will allow customers to decide how their services are terminated (for example, to a fixed or wireless device) and this too will have its effect on the rating rules.

It looks as if the move by operators to offer a wider range of services, delivered in a wider variety of ways, will generate yet more sophisticated interconnect pricing models. These developments will stretch the flexibility of many existing interconnect billing systems to the limit.