These services are rapidly becoming more important to operators, as factors like deregulation and 3G investment drive the need for network revenue maximisation and cost-cutting through infrastructure sharing.
Omni-chargE, which is already installed at its first customer site, a European PTT, is a newly-developed, stand-alone application from Intec, the market leader in intercarrier billing systems. It combines a wide range of service billing features, to meet varying operator requirements, with a robust and proven technical architecture that gives scalability, security and manageability. Omni-chargE also communicates directly with other OSS and billing systems, to facilitate more efficient customer services, and with financial systems such as SAP and Oracle to allow fast integration into telco business operations.
With margins from pure calls or data services under competitive pressure, operators are looking for additional revenue sources from their network investments and facilities. Providing higher-margin services such as web server or ADSL router co-location, broadband leased lines, unbundled local loop exchange facilities, dark fibre, mobile site and mast sharing, temporary event facilities, cable laying, corporate facilities and even professional services such as telecoms consulting can all generate significant new carrier revenues. Billing for these services is a complex activity, as they may be regular events, one-off requirements or specially negotiated contracts. Omni-chargE is designed to support all these outgoing billing possibilities, as well as controlling operating costs by supporting the reconciliation of incoming service bills from other providers. Billing for shared facilities also cuts costs without impacting service provision.
Omni-chargE takes us into a new billing space, and one where we see a growing need in many types of operator, said Intec CEO, Kevin Adams. The complexity of service offerings is rising, particularly as deregulation, unbundling and cost-sharing initiatives are driving operators to supply more services to each other. There is also an increase in service provision to corporate and retail clients, as carriers seek to improve competitive performance through innovation and customer service delivery. Omni-chargE allows them to bill profitably and accurately for all kinds of non-call services, with the kind of usability, robustness and ease of implementation that they have come to expect from Intec solutions.
Omni-chargE supports even the most complex service provision agreements through a highly flexible rating and agreement management system. The rating system allows billing on many factors, such as contract duration, real or notional distance, traffic volume, quality of service, capacity, SLAs, and many others. The agreement mangement system allows operators to store and update a high level of detail on each agreement, with the ability to perform drill down analysis to see how charges are computed. This level of rating flexibility, combined with interfaces to other billing and OSS systems, allows operators to be more innovative and competitive in pricing and provisioning service packages.
Omni-chargE has been developed with the benefit of worldwide experience, and the operational needs of over 200 fixed, mobile and IP carriers. It provides the security, auditability, performance and scalability expected of a carrier-grade OSS, with usability features such as a high-quality user interface and a small server/storage footprint. Omni-chargE is a multi-currency system (including full Euro compliance) that is designed to be fast to install and implement, and can be maintained and operated with existing billing and OSS skill sets.
