Risky Billing

Much of the emerging billing software is designed to help North American carriers journey to business scenarios they've never or seldom seen before.

One such place is where sales of prepaid wireless services keep pace with postpaid services, and where prepaid wireless includes wireless Internet and value-added services such as games, music and streaming video. This is the land of convergent prepay.

I'd say prepaid is going to be increasingly important in (North America), as it is in other parts of the world, said James Morehead, Portal group manager of wireless market development (visit #469 or www.portal.com).

Morehead said that Portal can coexist with an existing prepaid platform to provide real-time billing for convergent prepay, but he revealed that the company plans to expand its billing capabilities for prepaid voice services. The company plans to make several announcements about the new capabilities during Wireless 2001.

Another future destination is the land of creative billing, where content billing models replace the traditional process of billing by the minute. This also is a place where carriers can charge different prices for different kinds of services based on the value of those services, such as sending an instant message or downloading photographs. As an example, Morehead talks of one carrier that has a popular game, which it currently charges for by the minute.

You could, for example, even make it more interesting by having the loser pay the winner's airtime, he said. But that's the kind of billing model that becomes very difficult with the existing legacy infrastructure.

Portal will have two demos at Wireless 2001 designed to address value-added billing. One demo was created with PacketVideo, a multimedia content provider. It will illustrate how customers can buy movie tickets and receive credits to view movie trailers via their pocket PCs. The content provider, a movie studio, would receive payment every time someone viewed a trailer.

Portal's second demonstration is with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (visit #870 or www.usa.capgemini.com).

We're showing how you can charge for content, in this case, interactive games, in innovative ways, Morehead said. During the demo, a gaming content provider in Asia will be connected to Portal's Infranet wireless implementation in California, showing the application live over a WAP browser in Las Vegas.

For carriers migrating to 2.5G and 3G networks, the precarious nature of customer ownership may become a big issue. They may want to migrate to billing systems that will have next-gen functionality without having to abandon their legacy systems, thus driving up the cost of doing business in a potentially high-churn environment.

Then there's the issue of undefined business scenarios. Or as Geneva Technology (www.gtl.com) president Idar Voldnes puts it, It's not clear what types of services are going to be offered in 2.5G and 3G. That's all still developing. He added that wireless data services are a given but no one is sure yet what kind of data services may emerge.

Though Geneva won't have its own booth at the show, the company is providing demos focusing on billing for m-commerce at the booths of Compaq (visit #2213 or www.compaq.com) and Cap Gemini.

The example we're going to show is called Jane and the golf clubs, Voldnes explained. The demo is about a busy soccer mom who wants to buy a set of golf clubs for her husband's birthday. It shows her trying to find a store that has what's she looking for and using location-based services before and during her shopping trip.

Amdocs is taking on the issues relative to next-gen billing with its recently launched 3G billing platform. During Wireless 2001, Amdocs (visit #2616 or www.amdocs.com) will demonstrate how its software suite can be used for automatic registration and provisioning and in conjunction with SMS, wireless Web access, video-on-demand and other 3G applications.

More at the Show:

Unicorn, UshaComm's software products solution, has been designed specifically to support cellular carriers, indirect carriers, resellers, fixed-line operators, ISPs and broadband services. This solution has been optimized to run on Compaq's AlphaServer GS Series, Tru64 UNIX operating system, featuring advanced TruCluster V5 clustering technology and on Compaq's ProLiant 8-way and ProLiant 1600, based on 8-way symmetric multiprocessor architecture.
Visit #2213 or www.compaq.com

Info Directions, a developer of rating, billing and customer-care solutions to the integrated communications marketplace, has announced its Web-enabled capacity to meet carrier demands. Carriers are given access via a Web browser allowing CSRs to enter wireless services through an interface designed for wireless subscribers.

The usage-based rating functionality provides for the rating and billing of SMS. WAP rating by SID numbers is incorporated to support nationwide and zoned wireless-service offerings. This allows carriers to identify origination and termination sites and rate accordingly.
Visit #7135 or www.infodirections.com