Overall – Best Contribution to BSS
2008: LHS
2007: Amdocs & Orga Systems
2006: LHS

Judges’ Award: ‘Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty’
2008: Nawras
2007: BSNL

Innovation In Billing & Information Management
2008: Highdeal
2007: Progress Software
2006: Highdeal

Best Billing / Charging Implementation
2008: NTT DoCoMo
2007: Vodafone UK /Flexphone
2006: BT Mobile / Martin Dawes Systems

Best Content / Partner Management Implementation
2008: No nominations carried forward
2007: Interia PDTM / Comarch
2006: MTN South Africa and Echostar / MetraTech (Co-Winners)

Best e/m-Commerce / Payments / Collections Implementation
2008: Maxis/paybox & Garanti Bank

Best Revenue Assurance / Management Project
2008: BT / cVidya
2007: BT
2006: Allround/Magyar Telekom

Best Customer Management / Business Intelligence / Marketing Project
2008: No nominations carried forward
2007: Mobilink
2006 -Thuraya  Satellite Telecommunications

This years Judges:
Anil Prakash – President, Telecom Users Group of India
Barbara Lancaster – President, LTC International
Chris Sanders – Partner, Business Change Partners
Hugh Roberts (Chair) – Consultant Director, BSS/OSS RM Events, IIR Telecoms &
Senior Strategist – Patni Telecoms Consulting
Olga Botero – CIO, Bancolombia
Peter Smith – Director of Information Technology, Hong Kong CSL
Teresa Cottam – Principal Telecoms Analyst, Analysys

Frens Jan Rumph

Although their actions (and probably their vast personal and professional network) define their right of existence, I’m not sure about their new name. I can understand the move to drop the name GBA, although it still is a very strong brand name in my perception, billing on itself is probably setting the scope to narrow. Also the integration within the TM Forum calls for a different name. And while the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative doesn’t really sound that catchy it does align with my perception of the challenges and opportunities in charging and billing.

The bill is traditionally an important part in the communication towards the customer. Yet we still only send a bill once a month and then leave it at that, while one can easily image that service usage and perceived service value can be increased by more direct feedback in relation to the service and the billing relationship. As an example: lack of transparency in the tariff function can unnecessarily be a prohibitive factor in using a service, especially if the service is complex or consumed abroad. But also customer usually will be quite happy to see when he or she can consume or just has consumed a service with a discount or even for free, this is completely different effect then when you see the aggregated discount at the bill at the end of the month!

So for me, charging, billing and settlement is about more then just the monetisation of a service, the usage to cash process. And the term revenue is an operator focused term, and focussing on the operator instead of the customer is not going to keep us in the game when competing with the internet domain…

Al together I hope they (or we actually, due the participation through my employer) can increase the quality of the billing stack in the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map!

AMS may possibly bring something new and fresh, I really like the focus on the service/application. Especially the idea of cooperation between end-user devices, the Jini vision comes alive again. As for the comparison between AMS and IMS, since AMS is still in its infancy it is indeed hard to compare the two. But they do overlap! And I think that therefore alone they should be compared, over and over and over. Too much money and time has been invested in SIP, XCAP and such that the overlap can not be ignored.

Also I have my fingers crossed that it stays really free of too much vendor influences. A completely academic standardisation probably wouldn’t be the best of ideas either, since a standard is for a big part meant for industrial use. A balance in this is required, in order for a standard to be successfully adopted.

As for the charging and billing stuff, it is perhaps not the sexiest thing to talk about. But if companies are investing in the development of new technology, and are putting large amounts of money in the day-to-day management and operations of services that are using that technology, someone will need to pay for that. The IP backbone and operator networks don’t run and power themselves. And phones and such still don’t grow of trees.

I’m not saying here that business models might not change, think for instance of sponsorship and such. I also think that a customer is certainly willing to pay for what he perceives as value (instead of distance times duration)!

Furthermore if technologies/networks/services are to be monetized, you should see charging, billing and settlement as an opportunity to further increase the customer experience! For instance: a customer is surely wont mind hearing that he/she received something for free, where he/she normally pays for. So why let him/her know at the end of the month on the bill, instead of immediately after or even during service usage!

To end my ramble on charging/billing: there are too many examples of projects where the order handling, provisioning, billing and other non-service customer-facing processes came last, but hugely impacted on the success of a product! Operators usually get more media attention when they screw up with their bills then when they run a cool new services.

Concluding: I applaud and follow with great anticipation any developments that push the state-of-the-art in new (multimedia) services! Be it research or industry standardisation. I however don’t expect a big-bang of mind-blowing unseen services and a customer value that has yet to be seen before.

Frens Jan Rumph

The project is sponsored by BT, Microsoft and Telefonica. Further contributions are made by Accenture, CA, Iptivia, Netcracker and Tribold.

The idea of the project is to create a service delivery concept which reassembles SOA service repositories. A service provider exposes a number of services that can be syndicated by a party that combines the services into a new service for the end-user. These syndicated services could be voice or any other multimedia communication services, content services, et cetera.

The project gives the following example, it neatly shows how a service supply chain can be instantiated by syndicating a number of loosely-coupled services:

• A conferencing service is exposed by Service Provider A to be syndicated under three contracts: small, medium and large conference
• A real time video session delivery is exposed by Service Provider B to be syndicated under two contracts: slideware presentation and animated presentation
• A common billing service is exposed by Service Provider C to be syndicated under one contract: detailed charging
• A service aggregator will contract an animated video presentation for a small conference with detailed charging. The service aggregator has the capability to capture events/information related to the health and usage of services provided by SP A and SP B before using SP C for invoicing the end user.”

Phase I of the catalyst project demonstrated the end-to-end product assembly, provisioning and service quality management capabilities ready for service syndication. The next phase, scheduled for the second half of 2008, will include settlements, billing and revenue allocation.

It sounds like a very interesting project; especially the second phase is of particular interest for me personally. I have done some research on similar problems from a charging and billing perspective already in the Ambient Networks project and more recently in an in-house research project within my company. Some of these results have landed in a paper called ‘Accounting, Charging and Billing for Dynamic Service Composition Chains’ which is currently under review for the 17th International Conference on Information Systems Development. This paper gives some views on the changes required on Accounting, Charging and Billing processes and enabling systems in order for them to support service composition similar to the service syndication concept presented in this TM Forum catalyst project.

This project is definitely on my watch list!

Yes, it might be a bit shocking, perhaps not suprising, it probably was not the vision of 3G initiators years and years ago. But, I disagree that we just need ‘plain old’ IP access for internet with some GSM and SMS stuff on top. Sure, the days of walled gardens and the traditional one-sided telco business models are over. I won’t argue against that, and this is probably a good indication that it is.

But we will need QoS and prioritisation since some services simply have different requirements on the communications network then others and that has a tremendous effect on the QoE (Quality of Experience), which in turn is (IMHO) an important aspect of some of todays and a lot of tomorrows services. We will also need differential pricing. Flat fee will not last for ever, nor will services with a business model purely based on advertising. Perhaps we will see third-party based sponsorships in the near future, which will require differential pricing. And the IMS is an enabler for this. Especially if you combine that with the vision of research projects such as Ambient Networks and the Advanced Multimedia System. The future will tell if telco’s will become/stay bit pipes, I’d say that there are loads of opportunities to being more then that!

Frens Jan Rumph

I was a bit shocked because the advances made by AMS (as described in the article) sounded like it would have a lot of overlap with the IP Multimedia System, which is being standardised for the last 8 years or so? Continuing to read the article I became a bit puzzled, since the article didn’t even mention the IMS, let alone making a comparision or describing their relationship. Furthermore, do we really need rescuing? Is this a signal from the ITU that we’re heading the wrong way with our current developments (e.g. the IMS)? This called for a little digging

 Some facts on the Advanced Multimedia System:

• It was formerly referred to as H.325.
• The goal of the AMS project is to create a new multimedia terminal and systems architecture that supports distributed and media rich collaboration environments.
• Presently, the project is in the requirements-gathering phase and is starting to look at possible architectures.
• AMS envisions an environment in which a user has many AMS-enabled devices including portable wireless, home entertainment and computer-based devices and is offered many applications and services that are either peer-to-peer or network-provided.
• AMS is viewed as the successor system to the legacy H.323 and SIP systems.

The objectives of the AMS project are:

• Improve the end user experience
• Enable innovative applications
• Enable mobility
• Enable multimedia
• Make it easy to use
• Improve productivity
• Ease application and service development

Some example applications of the AMS:

• Traditional voice and video
• Whiteboard
• File transfer
• Application sharing
• Text messaging
• Video streaming (e.g., IPTV)
• Gaming
• Multi-user data conferencing
• Streaming audio (e.g., “IP radio”)

The AMS project envisions the following components:

• “container” - This is the device that represents the user to the network (e.g., a desk phone, mobile phone, or softphone application)
• Application Protocol Entities (APEs) - These are the applications that register with the container to provide the user with voice, video, and data collaboration capabilities
• Service Nodes (SNs) - These are the network entities that enable the container to establish communication with a remote entity, facilitate NAT/FW traversal, and provide other network-based services
• Application Servers (AS) - These are elements in the network that provide various services, which might include IPTV,

 My n cents on AMS:

1. The focus of the AMS is more at the edge of the network then one would suspect when reading things such as ’AMS is viewed as the successor system to legacy H.323 and SIP systems.
2. A lot of goals of the AMS project are in line with the goals of the IMS, and IMHO seek to build on the efforts put in the standardisation of the IMS by 3GPP. The project description describes that liasons should be made with IETF, ETSI (TISPAN), 3GPP, 3GPP2 and the IMTC, and that it should draw on the work of OASIS, MPEG, IETF, ISO and IEEE. Lets just hope they do! There’s no point in starting all over again!
3. A lot of goals and the vision of the AMS project are in line with the Ambient Networks project, an EU FP6 research program, perhaps the ITU can learn from that research.
4. The project specifies a lot of Work Items, but NONE on accounting, charging or billing! This would IMHO mean a big gap in the research performed! Unless of course the ITU envisions a world without money or is getting communistic on us
5. I wonder how this relates to DLNA? I’m not an expert on that technology, but I have a hunch that there is a relationship here as well!

For further information ake look at this project overview presentation (pdf) from Packetizer, it provides a nice overview of the project. Or check out the AMS project description (pdf).

Frens Jan Rumph

As always: Customer is King! These results are again an indication that Charging and Billing present opportunities for improvement.

Customer Billing Satisfaction Linked to Churn, TM Forum Study Shows

Customer satisfaction with telecom billing systems, especially for mobile services, is a key to customer loss rates, according to the results of the latest TM Forum Business Benchmarking study, released this week at Management World 2008 World in Nice, France.

The telco benchmarking data show a large gap between the top and average billing inquiry rates among service providers. Average performers logged 16.21 percent of inquiries as billing-related while leading companies reported billing inquiries at 1 percent of all inquiries. Significantly, good performers in this area show lower customer loss rates with less effective performers showing high loss rates.

“Since the largest cause of customer services calls for mobile subscribers is for billing- related issues, investments in streamlined billing plans and multiple-play plans can generate a good rate of return,” the report noted.

The study, “Building on Success: Investment Opportunities in Changing Times,” was produced for TM Forum by OSS Observer and included input from more than 40 communications service providers from Central and Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, North and Latin America. The poll has been conducted each spring and fall over the past three years.

The TM Forum Business Benchmarking results show a widening gap between communications service providers with the best and the worst churn rates. In fourth quarter 2005, the providers with the worst churn rates (2.81 percent) had nearly three times the churn as providers with the best churn rates (.94 percent). In second quarter 2007, providers with the worst rates (3.7 percent) had 5.5 times the churn as those with the best rates (.67 percent).

“To retain and acquire customers [communications service providers] must continue to pursue improvements in operations: service delivery and customer management,” the report added.
Benchmarking data show leading service providers deliver orders in seven days or less 99 percent of the time and need to rework those orders less than 10 percent of the time. Further, the investment in processes leads to an average resolution by leaders in less than one hour.

“Clearly customer satisfaction, and therefore the revenue opportunities for additional services, is related to this high level of performance at service delivery. Investment in mature process development at the onset of service offerings is much less expensive than fixing a process once fielded,” the report stated.

My two cents…

Cent 1: Added value
While speed is ofcourse a (not unimportant) requirement for a real-time rating and credit control application, it’s not going to win you the war. Adding customer value just might, and a credit control request rated within 2 milliseconds or within 20 milliseconds just might not be perceived as value by the customer.

Cent 2: Service Orientation
When checking out their website I noticed the following remark: ‘@Billity’s powerful functionality comes in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This provides you a framework to integrate existing, legacy applications on to a single platform.’ This sounds good of course, SOA is a great buzz word (yes, it still is). However I’ve not seen ANYthing that leads me to thing that it has any caracteristics of being service oriented. Just to be complete, the service oriented design principles as described by Erl:

• Service Loose Coupling
• Service Abstraction
• Service Reusability
• Service Autonomy
• Service Statelessness
• Service Discoverability
• Service Composability
• Standardized Service Contract

I think that the combination of SOA and charging/billing presents some great opportunities, in terms of business agility, time-to-market and total cost of ownership. But there are also some hurdles to be taken. One of those is performance. Some billing implementations have to process millions of CDR’s per hour, but the most commonly used SOA enabling techologies (SOAP/XML webservices) are probably not going to ‘cut it’. Especially if you consider that some charging/billing processes would involve a lot of service invocations.

I wonder if any vender will ever pick up on this by itself, the benifit for them might just not be big enough…

Frens Jan Rumph

A couple of things:
1) I’m getting more and more interested in their FusionWorks Framework. I’ve never had the chance to work with it, but perhaps in the future.
2) I’m not sure what the Policy Manager is policing. It’s all very flexible and on a per subscriber basis etcetera, but what does it police?
3) Does the Policy Manager implement 3GPP’s Policy & Charging Control architecture (3GPP TS 23.203)?
4) If the Balance Manager supports IETF diameter, the please support the standardisation process done by 3GPP! This will probably help the entire industry!

Link: announcement at billingworld.com
Link: Openet’s Policy Manager product page
Link: Openet’s Balance Manager product page

Frens Jan Rumph

I hope that the lack of finalists in the categories ‘Best Content / Partner Management Implementation’ and ‘Best Customer Management / Business Intelligence / Marketing Project’ is only due to a lack of proposals from the industry. Since these categories (in my view) contain a lot of opportunities for innovation, as well as challenges to overcome.

I must say that I get an increasingly desire to know the rationale for these types of award show nominees. Especially in the innovations category: what are these great new innovations? I wonder if all of the nominees in that categorie have even released a new product or version of a product. But perhaps that’s not the right criterion.

BTW: notice that Oracle and its Communications Billing and Revenue Management (a.k.a. Portal Infranet) is not on any list!

The finalists are:

1. Overall - Best Contribution to BSS
- Amdocs
- Comverse
- Intec Systems
- LHS
- MetraTech
- Orga Systems
- In addition, the Judges decided to give an Honourable Mention to AsiaInfo

2. Judges’ Award: ‘Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty’
- kajeet / Telcordia
- Nawras
- SFR / Capgemini
- Virgin Media / TMNG Global

3. Innovation In Billing & Information Management
- Garanti Technology
- Highdeal
- kajeet / Telcordia
- LHS
- MetraTech
- Orga Systems

4. Best Billing / Charging Implementation
- Astelit life / Orga Systems
- City Of Chicago / MetraTech
- du / LHS
- NTT DoCoMo
- Utel / Comverse
- In addition, the Judges decided to give an Honourable Mention to Opal / CTI Group

5. Best Content / Partner Management Implementation
- The Judges decided not to carry any nominations forward as Finalists in this category.

6. Best e/m-Commerce / Payments / Collections Implementation
- Garanti Bank
- Maxis / paybox
- QQ Coin
- VimpelCom / Kabira

7. Best Revenue Assurance / Management Project
- AT&T / ECtel
- BT / cVidya Networks
- Carphone Warehouse
- Etisalat Egypt / Connectiva Systems

8. Best Customer Management / Business Intelligence / Marketing Project
- The Judges decided not to carry any nominations forward as Finalists in this category. However, they did decide to give an Honourable Mention to George Kohl

The judges are:
Hugh Roberts (Chair) - Consultant Director, BSS/OSS RM Events, IIR Telecoms & Senior Strategist, Patni Telecoms Consulting
Anil Prakash - President, Telecom User Group Of India
Barbara Lancaster - President, LTC International
Chris Sanders - Partner, Business Change Partners
Olga Botero - CIO, Bancolombia
Peter Smith - Director of Information Technology, Hong Kong CSL
Teresa Cottam - Prinicipal Teldcoms Analyst, Analysys Mason

Frens Jan Rumph