Telecom OSS: Detailed Know-how

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Friday, May 28th, 2010 Subscribe To Our Feed

The telecom OSS is vital in the expanding world of technology. Telecommunication is an industry that is growing at a faster pace. To keep up with the current market requirements, it is very important to maintain a system. A system that effectively manages the units used by millions of consumers and makes those units billable.

Firstly, the services used by the customers need to be segregated. Then a detailed bill needs to be generated, giving a clear picture of customer usage. The billing department and the customer support have to work in unity to keep the customers happy. The telecom billing OSS helps with this.

Let us find out how a billing system is created. In a standard system, a customer will apply for the services with the relevant documents. The credibility of the person is checked and the wireless service will be provided. The customer preferences are saved and their account is activated.

The unique customer ID will save all the usage records of the particular customer. The system will use the chosen tariff plan by the customer and update the bill as per the Call Detail Records (CDR). Long distance call charges and roaming charges will be added to the system once the outside supporting telecom operators send in the details.

Call Detail Records updated the system with the call details such as Caller number, call duration, call start time, call end time and call duration. The customer is charged for data usage based on the data usage plan. All the calls made to the customer support are recorded and errors or faults are updated in the system. The customer support records every customer call for later reference.

Every month a computer generated invoice is sent to the customer in the form of a bill. Customers whose records show no payment processed for the earlier month/s are sent a warning message or their service will be temporarily deactivated.

At the end of the month, the invoice is generated, taking into account the usage, automatic invoices generated, reported errors, past payments and payments under process. If the payments are not processed on time, the account holder will receive alert messages or the account may get discontinued temporarily. If the customer has chosen an auto-debit service, then the payment will be automatically processed.

The entire telecom billing OSS depends on various factors like the billing costs and billing standards. Network Data Management, Automatic Message Accounting, Interim Standard 124, etc., are some of the billing standards. The system costs include the call center, collections, hardware and software costs and billing Cycles. These days e-bills are sent, but there are still customers who prefer printed bill copies. So, the printing cost of bills and other mails are also including in the billing system costs. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an important part in the billing process. These days there is stiff competition among telecom companies in the market so better services are available to consumers. Services like real time billing and multi-lingual support is provided to customers. Application support and flexible billing services are available. The future of telecom OSS is going to re-define the term ‘convenience’ to consumers.

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