A whitepaper on E2E Convergent BSS solution for Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators

1. Convergent Billing and other supporting use cases –A whitepaper
Proliferation of next generation converged digital services, increased competition from linear and
nonlinear players like OTT providers, higher expectation from customers on seamless experience in
terms of service and support; all these are driving operators to look for convergent business and
operations support solutions capable of providing tools which could manage the new convergent digital
service delivery chain.
Introduction
Last decade had witnessed telecommunication, media and entertainment industry growing into a new
dimension, where service and delivery models became more or less digital and IP oriented. IMS and OTT
technologies are further driving digitization into a new convergent world. At the same time Operators are
having a tough time to keep up with customer’s expectation for an end to end experience across products
offered, ordered, consumed and monetized. Operators are also realizing the importance of partnership
with OTT providers and content aggregators who at the moment are riding on top of operator network by
offering innovative value added services to the operators own customer . However this is adversely
affecting operator revenue by creating a scenario where operator itself is getting downgrade to a position
similar to a dump pipe carrying all value and still not able to make return out of that.
Today’s Telecom, broadband and other careers are facing these challenges irrespective of tiers and
geographies , and most of them are aware of the agility required in their strategy, systems and approach
to manage it. Industry analysts, Forums, integrators and ISV are helping operators to address these
concerns and foremost of their plan is to have the convergent business and operations support system
implemented. The key use cases behind such an initiative is that , it will enable operator to become more
agile with their offerings, transparent in their interface towards customers , ensure real time bit wise
monetization of services, open up towards partners and above all, will provide centralized view on
customers and their relationships , usage and revenue patterns .
It is a fact; Tier One CSP and large MSO are increasingly embracing new convergent billing and charging
platforms to address these challenges. The primary objective of such a solution is to have a central
system capable of addressing the catalog, charging and billing function across different industries –
Retail, Business; Service streams – data, voice and video; Payment models – pre, post and hybrid.
Convergent Billing- Major Use cases
The major convergent functions which operators often consider for evaluation are convergent product
catalog, online charging, Unified customer hierarchy and single convergent billing. Table 1.0 shows those
use cases and expected behavior.

2. Table 1.0 –Convergent Billing ; Major Features
Convergent Billing Feature Expected functionality
Uniform product catalog  One of the key aspects of a convergent system is its
ability to bundle diverse products together to form
hybrid services and offer to customer. The major
factors which get positively influenced due to this
are, the operators capability to launch services
quickly and thus better ROI and reduced
implementation costs.
 Single product and service catalogue is key in this
direction which could accommodate all services,
resource and product definitions of operator and
partner ecosystem.
 The module is expected to have flexible and intuitive
management features to define services and
products, attributes associated, define business and
compatibility rules which could determine the
patterns while bundling and grouping, attach
resource and launch templates or plan offers to
customer.
 The uniform catalog is also proposed as the central
entity where operator’s whole service, products and
plans across retail, corporate business being
defined and managed.
Real time charging or Online
charging system
 The most widely discussed aspect of convergent
solution is its capability to handle convergent
charging and more specifically real time convergent
charging.
 Convergent charging will help operators to launch
true convergent service portfolios like IMS video
calling , where the charging system not only need to
interact with next generation IMS network elements
for capturing the usage information in online , but
also perform session management and rating of two
diverse service portfolio which is Voice and Data.
Customer may have different rating characteristics
or tariff as part of his/her rate pan for addressing the

3. usage for voice and data usage even if the service
delivery is of a single hybrid service.
 In addition to the convergent service charging, OCS
is also increasingly replacing camel based IN
platforms in the MNO network topology because of
latter’s inability to support complex charging and
promotions requirements which are more common
within the prepaid world of service delivery.
 Flow based charging or service aware charging is
another use case which is now widely used by
operators in connection with offering VAS offerings
like social packs on top of subscriber’s base service
plans. Convergent real time rating or OCS as per
the international telecom standard body 3GPP is
being used as the solution framework to support
such type of charging.
 In addition to service convergence, OCS or
convergent charging should also handle multiple
payment models- postpaid, prepaid and hybrid
across balance, credit limit and subscription limits.
 Real time promotions or rating time discounts, which
need complex algorithms to work is another
powerful upselling and retention feature offered by
convergent billing solution
 Personalized Charging is also increasingly popular
in terms of customer, location, bearer, access
channel, multi-service association, contents,
occasion, customer, etc.
Unified customer hierarchy  Unified customer hierarchy is the ability of
convergent systems to support all subscriptions
across services and payment modes, maintaining all
the subscription and sharing rules, under one
customer entity.
 It should also support multiple nodes of child
customers and respective subscription under a
parent customer hierarchy. The view offers a 360
degree view of customer’s service, subscription,

4. revenue patterns of each individual customer.
 A key aspect of this function is the ability to manage
the subscriber profile repository of all service across
fixed, wireless and video spectrum.
 Allowance sharing rules, defining thresholds, and
alert modes on expiry of limits, are defined at the
hierarchical level.
Single bill  The most common use case of convergent billing
system is the single bill capability.
 It is a combination of all the use case mentioned
above and in addition, bringing a capability to
consolidate all charges, across service and products
to form a single bill.
 A convergent billing platform should also have the
capability to generate statements for prepaid
subscriptions as well within same bill.
 It should support moving subscriptions across
hierarchy between different child nodes so as to
maintain different hierarchical view for charging,
billing and reporting.
 Cross service discounts, another tool for upsell and
customer retention is also addressed within this
framework
 Capability to address multiple currency, multi
country deployment options, tax on tax are other
features which are discussed in connection with this
function.
Convergent Billing - Current Implementation patterns
It is understood that, large MNO and MSOs who have deployed OCS or convergent billing system; still
depend on legacy billing or charging platforms like INs for their prevailing service portfolios like GSM, 2G
and most often the OCS or convergent platforms are only used to address newly launched service
portfolios in terms of 4G or LTE …reason being fear of change or cost incurred in migration.
However, there are other set of service providers which includes majority of ISPs and tier 2, tier 3 MSO
who are trying to innovate with new access technologies as part of competing in this new digital world.
Have been using legacy primitive business support systems or even no such systems, most of these

5. operators are not in a position to handle the multi play service delivery and monetization needs arise due
to this new competition . These operators are looking for systems which could be future proof in terms of
access network, innovative offer bundling, real time charging and other convergent use cases mentioned
above.
As capex and opex are major factor for these operators, they always want to have comprehensive
turnkey solutions which could address all convergent use cases rather restricting on selected
functionalities or system. Unlike large MNO or MSO, it will be easy for these operators to migrate their
existing systems into new convergent CRM and billing framework. A true convergence solution thus
provides a strong value proposition, by not only reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) but also
introducing ROI via a future proof investment.
Additional Use cases - Expanding the convergent framework beyond charging and billing
As explained in the table 1.0, convergent solution within telecom and media industry is more synonymous
towards a centralized product catalog, online charging, single bill and unified customer hierarchy. If
closely look into, these convergent features or use cases have a common element within it, which is
tracking the 360 degree view of its relationship with customers across different services and channels.
In that respect, other than the use cases mentioned above, there are other aspects as well from a
convergent perspective within the business and operation support framework, which can enhance
operator’s capability in addressing and managing customer expectation. Few to name include AAA &
policy management, unified self-care portals, notification and alert management, and customer care. It
is also important for operators to make use of these convergent customer and service information to
develop and deploy its strategy towards new customer acquisition, content /OTT partner management
etc by bringing similar capabilities across campaigns, and partner management functions.
Table 1.1, below defines those functions within the O/BSS framework where supporting uses cases on
convergence are identified.
Table 1.1 –Convergent Billing Support functions
OSS/BSS Function Convergent Features
AAA and captive portal  A true convergent AAA platform should be capable of handling
fixed-mobile convergence across different access topologies.
 Single stack which could address multiple access network 3GPP
(GPRS, UMTS, 4G) and Non 3GPP (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, DSL, ADSL,
FTTX, iburst)
 Compliance to 3GPP AAA standards to support internetworking

6. of non 3GPP access over 3GPP service; Mobile data offload for
example
 Diameter/Radius based convergent charging and policy
management interface is another expected function
 LDAP, EAP , TLS, TTLS based authentication support to handle
3GPP and Non 3GPP network access and authentication.
 DHCP provision for dynamic and static IP address management
 Captive portal with built in templates of static and dynamic pages
and having option for easy customization as per operators
requirement
 Multi user profile management with admin profile option against
each individual subscription – A must have functionality within
Captive portal management – significant from multi login, multi
device perspective of Wi-Fi, home broadband and OTT services.
 Proxy and relaying capabilities over Radius and Diameter for
addressing Fixed-Mobile as well as IP based convergence
Policy Management  For ISP and MSO who offer fixed and wireless broadband
services, a convergent policy management is need of the hour to
help operators address innovative use cases like
o Service aware session based charging & policy control
o Device and location based access Restriction
o Parental Control
o Bill shock prevention –credit control, allowance , prepaid
o APN and Access network based polices
The function could offer convergent uses cases on policy
management viz.. Prepaid and postpaid, access agnostic and
access specific policies. Fixed (DSL, ADSL, FTTX), Mobile,
3GPP (GPRS, UMTS, LTE) and Non 3GPP services (Wi-Fi and
Wimax).
 The function shall thus comply with 3GPP PCRF specification as
well as broadband –forum BPCF standards
 Policy interfaces towards different network elements and touch
points viz.. IMS AF, AAA, NAS, PCEF and DPI means the policy
function shall support both Radius and Diameter interfaces.
 The function shall have layered approach so that operators as
per their business requirements could easily enable or disable
the policy templates and interface points.

7.  Wherever common policy implementation possible - across
wireless-wired or prepaid-postpaid spectrum, the system should
have options to allow define and implement those policies thus
avoiding redundancy.
Unified self-care portal with
multiple profiles and
integrated payment gateways
 Convergence at Customer level is the key aspect of
convergence highlighted across this whitepaper. Convergent
charging, convergent billing and unified customer hierarchy as
well as single bill are prominent use cases to establish that fact.
 A unified self-care platform for both prepaid and postpaid
segments as well as all quad play services is very key in that
respect - of both convergence as well as customer experience.
 Provides a common platform for customer to access and
manage all his portfolio across diverse plans or service he
subscribed to .
 Other prominent features within a unified self-care platform
should include calendar features, limit definition , setting
reminder, expiry notices on packs and plans subscribed– which
will enhance customers confidence with the operator and build a
more loyal relationship result more revenue.
 Family accounts and corporate pooling are other features for
convergent self-care portal where admin or parent users will
define limit and add additional products to child users as per the
usage patterns.
 Integrated payment gateways with PCI standards along with
support for different patterns of online payment - interactive and
non-interactive, tokenized etc.
Integrated work flow and
notification management
 A convergent business and operation support system should
have enough flexibility by means of event management feature
to manage different events across various business processes
involved –credit limit expiry, payment, order generation, billing
etc.
 The function should be part of a common framework which
should allows user to map specific set of actions against certain
set of . The framework shall allow operators to select events
and set actions which must be pre-configured viz...Send
notifications to subscribers, usage and payment reminder,
promotional offers etc. This information shall be able to be sent

8. through various channels - like e-mail, OSD, STB, E- mail,
Mobile SMS.
 The framework shall allow the actions to be either synchronous
or processed as part of a schedule which means an option shall
be part of the system.
Contact Center & Customer
Interaction modules
 Contact center provides the convergence of multiple interaction
channels; It is the capability within the contact center to offer
multiple channel based interactions call, Web , email and chat
 Another aspect is the ability to address all subscribers or
customer interaction irrespective of the service and product
portfolio they subscriber to.
 IVR, ACD , Web chat , integrated routing policies to avoid
conflict , access to unified customer repository and CTI interface
are those features required to be part of such a platform .
Campaign Management  Campaign management and targeted marketing could make use
of the unified customer information provided as part of a
convergent solution –customer profile, bill, usage patterns,
payment patterns, balances, status, services and products so
that it could enable real time marketing initiatives and
campaigns.
 Will benefit in the form of increased ARPU, upselling of new
services and also to generate loyalty among existing customers
SOA based charging,
ordering , customer
management framework for
OTT, Video Monetization
 Convergent charging and billing solution as explained in the
introduction is a key factor in supporting channels like OTT and
IPTV services.
 Operators understand the need to partner with OTT players and
video content providers so that they could protect their revenue
streams. The partnership brings a set of features and interface
from the convergent system perspective.
o Customer information exposed over an SOA framework
so that OTT players could verify the customer
credentials and balance /credit before provision the
requested service
o OTT and content partners also can also make use of
convergent unified customer profile information to
understand the buying and consumption patterns to
personalize the offerings.

9. o Similarly from a billing perspective the convergent
system should be capable of interfacing with external
applications like OTT and IPTV middleware to capture
the usage information of the services consumed so that
it can be consolidated in the single bill to customer.
Customer will receive a single bill across its services
irrespective of operator service or OTT services.
Partner Management and
Revenue share
 From partner management of OTT /IPTV /Content providers,
operators need the system to support following business
requirements.
o Shared product catalog management
o Convergent billing as a service - MVNE
o Partner management and billing
o Reconciliation of bills. comparison of usage and dispute
management
Orchestrating disparate
provisioning requirements
across multi play service
request –
 Handling multiple services, quad play, triple play services and
products across different customer types and partner chain
involves complex provisioning requirements. A convergent
provisioning feature shall be available with a flexible adapter
based on rule driven configuration to communicate with the
network elements and provision the service.
 This could also include integration towards third party networks
and middleware systems where partners like OTT players are
involved.
 The adapter as per the rules and configurations against various
services, region, device type, should interface with respective
network elements for execute the corresponding network -
specific commands as part of provisioning
Service and network agonistic
Mediation
 A convergent mediation platform provides an enterprise-wide
platform which could help operators to address the billing
mediation, network mediation and data collection challenges
across different network elements and partner systems.
 Act as the key entry point for network usage analysis where
usage CDR can be pushed to an analytical engine to extract key
customer and usage patterns and take appropriate actions to
stop revenue and customer churn
 Act as a consolidation point towards all usage mediation,

10. requirements across multiple access technologies are IP, IMS,
traditional fixed line and circuit.
 The mediation will also abstract billing, charging application from
data points which means reduced time to market for new data
sources and application.
The support features mentioned over table 1.1, are especially significant and will add value for the ISP
and MSOs, who always want to go for those systems which could support the end to end use cases
rather than point features and functionalities. A fully convergent operation and business support system
built around the convergent framework as mentioned in this whitepaper can help operators to achieve
both their primary and secondary objectives which are increase in revenue and a faster ROI respectively.
Conclusion
To roll out next generation digital services and to content with growing customer expectations, operators
across the world are looking for convergent solutions and that fact is evident from the recent research
report showing convergent charging implementation alone is projected for 14 Billion USD by 2017.
From an ISP or MSO perspective, an end to end convergent solution is what they could afford rather than
implementing point solutions. Hence, a business and operation support system which could provide the
convergent framework over customer hierarchy, product bundling, real time charging and single bill along
with other supporting functions across service -access delivery and support chain is the need of hour.
Biju M R
Telecom & Media OSS/ BSS –Architect & SME
Biju.vrindavan@gmail.com
+91 7768067700