IP billing moves to the front

Internet protocol billing came into its own last week at Billing '99 in Dallas as service providers were presented with a harsh reality: As the cost of transmission drops because of conversion to IP, service providers also must bill for advanced IP services.

The trouble with current service providers is that they are worried too much about transporting bits, a thought left over from the circuit-switched world, said Paul Atkinson, CEO of Solect Technology Group.

"Moving a bit from Holland to Brazil is nothing, but a videoconference is something," he said."As the market moves from circuit- to packet-based, there are different requirements. The key is to get customers advanced services in real time."

By mixing IP billing systems with metering and mediation solutions, the current all-you-can eat variety of Internet services will most likely go the way of the party line. And mediation companies did their best to buddy up with as many billing providers as possible, announcing a slew of partnerships and coalitions.

Mediation and metering specialist XACCT teamed with 27 companies to form the XACCTready alliance. Members include LHS, Logica Inc., Portal and Solect.

The Internet already has moved through its fast build-out phase and Internet service providers are realizing that they need to create higher profit margins to survive, said Anil Uberoi, vice president of marketing at XACCT. "Now that [service providers] have reached critical mass, they have to run it like a business."

XACCT competitor Narus also used the show to work its ties with friends. Narus, along with AT&T and Telestrategies, said it has completed the initial work in creating a coalition that will offer an open standard for IP billing.

"We feel that there is a bit of confusion in the IP world. We felt that it would be very important to push an open standard in this market," said Ori Cohen, founder and CEO of Narus. Traditional carriers have cobbled together billing systems for years, using proprietary software, never needing an open standard until now, said Cohen. "Hopefully we can learn from the mistakes that the wireless and wireline guys made in the past," he said. Not wanting to be left out of the IP billing frenzy, Hewlett-Packard announced its mediation and metering solution, the result of a two-year project with Australian ISP Telestra.

"Based on the telecom model, we realized that it was only a matter of time before usage-based billing became standard, and we thought we would leverage the work we had already done," said Dana Kreitter, senior business development manager.