For all network operators Revenue

Assurance is of major importance. The

operator must provide fair and accurate

billing to the customer and also avoid

revenue leakage from services being

incorrectly rated and invoiced. In most

countries accuracy of metering and

billing is mandatory to comply with legal

regulations.

Money makes the world go round –what happens if the networks metering, rating and

billing is not correct?

Call Generation

CDR Comparison

Billing and Rating Verification

How to guarantee

correct billing?Today manual tests only provide

inaccurate, untrustworthy and in most

cases very expensive results. To ensure

correct billing a precise and reliable

Revenue Assurance system is essential.

With SITE scheduled, continuous testing

of all services provides maximum

assurance that all calls are being

correctly billed.

Features

Simulation of real subscriber behaviour

Interfaces: GMS/GPRS Um, GSM Gb, UMTS Uu,

HSDPA, HSUPA, CDMA2000, ISDN S0, GSM A,

ISUP, INAP

Scalable architecture: from stand-alone

system to widely distributed system

Central SIM Multiplexer: infinite number

of SIM cards can be managed

CDR generation

CDR comparison

Billing and Rating

Invoice comparison

Resource allocation for different users or groups

Detailed test reports

Revenue stream audit

Covering billing aspects of outbound roaming

SITE Test Concepts

> Revenue Assurance

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Time based Calls (e.g. speech)

A NumberB NumberCall Type

Begin of call for both filesDifference of begin of callCall duration for both filesDifference of call duration

Volume based Calls (e.g. GPRS-data)

A NumberB NumberCall Type

Begin of call for both filesDifference of begin of callData Volume for both filesDifference of data volume

Event based Calls (e.g. SMS)

A NumberB NumberCall Type

Time stamp from both files

SITE generates and compares output data like:

The SITE Call Detail Record (CDR) Comparison

provides a mechanism to match MSC call

records against SITE generated CDRs. Thus, the

correctness can be verified. Discrepancies

between the MSC CDR and the corresponding

SITE KPIs are calculated. And tolerances of CDR-

pair differences can be passed or failed. Thus

an independent means of minimizing Revenue

Leakage and ensuring the end customer is

subject to a fair and legally compliant charging

process. Scenarios such as basic call, SMS etc.

are used to generate CDRs from the network

elements. These standard network CDRs are

handled by the operators Mediation, Rating and

Billing Systems.

CDR Comparison

* Customization required

Operator CDRs SITE CDRs

CDR Comparison

Filter*

tropmI RDC*tropmI RDC

(unrated)(rated/unrated)

TariffModel*

RatingBilling Verification

Live Network

Unrated CDRsRated CDRs

> Revenue Assurance – CDR Comparison

Mediation Systems

Live CDRs

Comparison Results

Reference CDRs

Reports

CDRs

CDRPostprocessing

Test Call Generation

SITE Test System

Actual Customer Usage

Billing

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TariffModel

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With the SITE Billing and Rating concept the

actual price of a test case scenario dependent

upon the defined customer price plan can be

generated. This allows a simple comparison to

be made with the actual bill generated by the

network’s billing system.

With this concept there are test cases for the

services like basic call, SMS, MMS, WAP and

HTTP which write their own independently

measured CDRs into a data table. The billing

job then takes these CDRs during a specified

time period, and rates them according to the

pricing plan of the specific subscriber (Tariff

Model). The calculated price for each Test Case

is then written to the rated reference CDR table.

Furthermore, the reference of the invoice total

for a given period, is calculated and returned

as a result of the billing job. Then the live

invoice total is calculated and compared with

the reference invoice. Thus SITE Invoice

comparison creates measurements indicating

the correctness or discrepancies of invoices.

SITE CDR Comparison, including the price

comparison, can be used to identify the CDRs

that cause billing discrepancies.

The trace of the billing job can be viewed with

the SITE User Interface. This trace contains on

each line the rating (price) information

generated for each of the CDRs within the

billing job. Other details include the Service

Type and the event related time stamps. The

trace also contains the invoice total for the

whole billing job.

Billing and Rating Verification

A central part of SITE Billing and Rating concept

is the implementation of the price plans. A table

driven Tariff Model is built to replicate the price

plans and billing rules of the network operator.

The tables can be easily modified later, in the

case of changes to the price plan or associated

rules.

The billing job is defined and scheduled in the

same way as normal test cases. For the

parameterization of the billing job the user has

to provide a subscriber number, a tariff name

and a time period for which the bill shall be

created.

The SITE Billing and Rating concept again

enhances the Return on Investment (ROI) for

the SITE system. Now another vitally important

department, Revenue Assurance (RA), can also

become a user of the SITE system to perform

essential checks on the billing process.

The screenshot shows an example of a trace

SITE Test Concepts

> Revenue Assurance – Billing and Rating

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