OSS/BSS: Revisiting a FAB

The writing is clear on the wall: for all those telcos who have a viable
choice, integration is the name of the growth game.

Hutch is the only heavyweight that has kept odds at bay despite being a
pure-play GSM operator. All other titans-Bharti, Reliance, BSNL, and Tata-are
betting big on the integrated-services approach.

(It's the scope of another article why Hutch's strategy will continue to
work well for Hutch but can't be emulated by another Indian telco.)

It all stems from the fact that service-centric models are increasingly
giving way to customer-centric paradigms.

The
shift makes marketing of services a relatively simpler task, more so when there
is brand consolidation too, as in the case of Bharti. (The Mittals recently
announced the consolidation of their three service brands-Airtel, Touchtel,
and IndiaOne-into a single brand Airtel.)

That doesn't make life simpler for the OSS/BSS teams though, which are
instead faced with multiple new

challenges.

No Cakewalks so Far

Standardization and optimum centralization of various OSS/BSS components is
one way to address the challenges. However, the mix of legacy and 2—2.75G
networks ensures that operators won't achieve that without a fair share of
troubles.

The older an operator, the more complex is the network. Needless to say, BSNL
would beat others hands down.

The state-run behemoth, which, apart from MTNL, is the only player to have
more wirelines than wireless lines, is yet to standardize its OSS/BSS
components. It came out with an expression of interest (EoI) about two years
ago, towards an ambitious CDR-based billing project, but nothing came out of it.
The project lies in cold storage, thanks to the complexities involved and some
valid question marks raised over its success.

Both the government telcos continue to live with sizable revenue losses.

Bharti, which had much less legacy network than BSNL, also had to undergo
major problems when it started unifying its billing systems. Losses were
two-pronged-of revenues in cases of under-billing, and of customer loyalty in
cases of over-billing.

The only consolation for the GSM bellwether would have been that Reliance
Infocomm suffered billing-related problems of similar magnitude when it rolled
out its CDMA services later. That cleared the myth that greenfield operations
would be exempt from billing nightmares.

Fulfillment Challenges

Operators have learnt their lessons, many a time the hard way. And yet, the
ordeal may be far from over. Call that the tough reality of a multi-service,
multi-network environment.

Service fulfillment, especially the provisioning part of it, is an area that
demands some focus today. Often, one reason why some promising value-added
services (VASs) fail to take off is poor provisioning.

The other components of fulfillment, namely order management and service
activation are important too, but seamless provisioning is what would make the
real difference.

Here, process automation across the fulfillment suite is seen as a
ready-and-quick solution. However, automation without adequate thought process
can only distance VASs from the customer.

With scores of VASs vying for the subscriber's attention and with more to
appear on the scene, it's getting repellently crammed.

The idea behind giving subscribers a choice is not to swamp them
with heaps . A neat grouping of such services would, for example, be
better appreciated.

Assurance Woes

No matter how state-of-the-art is the network infrastructure, ultimately the
subscriber experience determines the score. And that experience is dependent on
a host of factors including uptime, QoS, SLAs, and so on.

Unfortunately, service assurance is an area where service providers can claim
far-from-satisfactory results. In fact, while old QoS-related issues remain to
be addressed, newer ones are cropping up.

Of late, mobile users subscribing to various service providers across
different circles have reported increased cases of cross-talks, even while
making mobile-to-mobile calls. Also, signal strengths were said to have dropped
considerably in various areas. On verification, VOICE&DATA found enough
substance in such complaints.

It may be noted that the Voice&Data Mobile Users Survey, last conducted
in December 2003, had found cellcos much lacking on the overall network
availability satisfaction index. As against a prescribed benchmark of 95 percent
satisfaction, all operators remained below 80 percent while some were even less
than 60 percent.

In the face of the prevailing state of QoS affairs, futuristic statements
about India leapfrogging to a 4G era sound nothing more than hyperboles.

In the absence of sound service assurance mechanisms, services like 3G or
even 4G lose their meanings.

Perhaps the telecom regulator needs to look at the service assurance issue
seriously. It may begin with laying out minimum norms for QoS and even set a
deadline for adherence to those norms, for existing networks.

As for future networks, operators would need to be qualify on pre-determined
service assurance parameters before they commercially launch their services.

Billing Beyond Bills

Even today, the billing process continues to be plagued with poor
integration of various sub-processes and input mechanisms. Let's consider this
actual instance: a subscriber received his monthly mobile bill and paid it
online, for which he even received a 'thank-you' SMS receipt. Yet, two days
later, he received a call from the offline billing setup, asking to clear up his
dues immediately. Such calls were repeated despite the subscriber explaining to
all callers how the bill was paid online. Obviously, the offline and the online
systems don't talk to each other.

Integrity of billing data across various OSS/BSS systems is much wanted. The
billing and customer-care departments don't talk to each other adequately.
This further complicates any billing-related problems and leads to customer
dissatisfaction, even churn.

On the other hand, billing problems can lead to happy customers for the wrong
reasons and thus result in revenue leakage.

FAB-fulfillment, assurance, and billing-as a process grouping can help
service providers address several OSS/BSS-related problems. By tuning the OSS/BSS
system for this grouping, various network performance issues and customer care
concerns will also get addressed.

Deepak Kumar

A Bucket for a Billing

For today's consumer, accounting for the service and spend
is becoming increasingly more complex to manage.

Across various services-mobile, fixed, WLAN, and DSL-the
number of service and tariff plans have gone up, but for the end-user the
decision-making and monthly-bill analysis has turned from headache to migraine.
For the service provider the situation isn't much prettier!

For a mobile phone user, a standard tariff plan can
incorporate an anomaly of usage charges from mobile to mobile across the same
network, mobile to mobile across different networks (and multiply both scenarios
by two for peak and off peak charging), MMS, SMS, SMS included in a package with
additional SMS usage on top, GPRS, and weekend tariffs. Then consider the
payment method-pre or post paid, or pre/post paid account hierarchies to suit
corporations and families. The decision-making process is difficult, remembering
the different rates for different services is difficult, and reading and
understanding one bill at the end of the month is also difficult, and
importantly time-consuming!

For the emerging markets where 'control' is key, the
current tariff plans and pre/post paid account hierarchies are an ideal match.
Operators don't have the support systems or banking infrastructure in place to
guarantee payments, so an environment where it can obtain payment upfront whilst
offering the customer post-paid service capability is ideal. Additionally, in
many emerging countries data is not so readily available so whilst consumers are
getting up to speed with voice services, data is taking second place.
Consequently, the tariff planning and bills are much less complex.

What happens when markets get more mature?

'Bucket billing' can simplify matters for both the
operator and the consumer. Instead of the complex tariff plans enforced at
present, consumers will be able to pick a 'bucket of usage units' at a cost
in line with their lifestyle. For instance, for Rs 1,000, a customer can buy
1,000 usage units and use the units for any service they want. As an example, a
mobile call across the same network may consume 1 unit, mobile call across
different networks 1.5 units, SMS 1 unit, MMS 3 units, and so on. At the end of
the month, customers would receive a bill, detailing the units spent. The 'bucket
billing' approach can also be applied to corporations and family accounts,
where the number of units to be distributed would be agreed at the contract
stage.

The customer would just need to choose the services and
number of units to put in the bucket. For the operator, it would require a good
aggregation capability in the billing platform so the convergent technology used
could be channelled into the correct bucket of usage.

Malcolm Lewis, executive vice-president, product
management and marketing, UshaComm

Revenue Assurance Is Important too...

Most of the products offer pre-packaged solutions. They
address not only the initial setup of a service provider with pre-packaged
starter kits but also provide add-on modules to evolve to a comprehensive and
convergent solution.

The service providers now provide real-time plus offline
charging. With this, the capability to define virtually any recorded event and
any field in the event as billable is highly desired. Apart from the rating and
billing capability, the billing systems focus more on managing the complete
revenue cycle of the user, for the service provider.

The need to provide seamless mobility to the user creates
another 'new segment' for billing. Compared to few hundred roaming partner
agreements, there are now thousands of such agreements in place in the world.
Partnerships and mergers are on rise due to this and service providers now need
dedicated billing solutions to manage and bill each involved partner based on
highly dynamic interconnect agreements.

On the other hand, when service providers are migrating from
2G to next generation networks they are also upgrading the billing system, the
billing systems face a number of challenges from different viewpoints.

From service infrastructure viewpoint, the challenge is to
allow migration of customers from one level of offered services to upgraded
level of services while retaining the simplicity of billing and invoicing.

Interconnect billing complexity has become more complex,
primarily in situations where partner networks offer different services through
networks that are different in generation. For example, a customer roams from
its home 2G network to another advanced network like EDGE or UMTS.

From technology perspective, keeping up with standards is the
biggest issue. The future standards could develop and converge, highlighting
high risk for billing system developers. At the same time the business models
also are unclear and still evolving. Increased web presence and access would
also increase the need to focus on system security.

With each generation and upgrade, the network brings about
the capability to offer numerous and multiple services and products. Therefore
cross product bundling or up-selling initiatives would be required to reduce
customer churn.

The time taken for rollout and absorption of technology from
one generation to another is one of the critical factors to billing system
vendors who plan out generation or technology-oriented business models or
billing processes.

So most of the billing vendors are coming with convergent
billing packages, which include mediation, rating, and billing of Internet
service usage and event information for IP and mobility 3G billing.
Functionality includes session control, event capture, rating, and charging for
data content, including mCommerce transactions and mobile services. It may also
include additional functionality such as service provisioning, customer care,
QoS monitoring, and back office billing integration.

In order to avoid the complexity and interfacing with
different system integrators and also to upgrade the services there will be a
lot of demand of the convergent billing system in the near future.

Rothin Bhattacharya, country manager, CSG Systems,
India