Elitecore Wins "Best Software Company" - Rising Star Award announced by Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA) at the first annual GESIA Awards 2008 function held in Ahmedabad on 28th March 2008.
Elitecore participated in the 16th Convergence India 2008 International Exhibition & Conference - South Asia's largest ICT event from 19 – 21 March, 2008.
In Spotlight : CRESTEL's Convergent Rating & Charging
Industry Overview
Market Expectations
Changing market dynamics and increasing competition have unleashed a plethora of challenges and opportunities for service providers worldwide. Customers, thesedays, are well informed and their demands for better standards of service are growing by the day.
While prepaid subscribers are looking for more customized subscription, payment of voice calls in postpaid mode, more loyalty and recharge options, their postpaid counterparts look forward to advice for charges of new services, ability to control spending, automated notifications, and immediate use of bonus units. Across both payment types, customers want attractive product bundles, optional complementary subscriptions, enhanced customer care, ability for self-care, integrated group accounts, community options and the like. They expect consolidate price information regardless of whether charges are for access, transport or volume.
Next Generation Challenges for Legacy IN Platforms
Most legacy IN implementations are ill-equipped to meet the development of new services emerging out of next generation technologies. These implementations face challenges in supporting flexible pricing plans and service bundles, and smooth switching between postpaid and prepaid payment types.
Next-generation services bring new levels of complexities to prepaid service access since the basis of pricing for basic data communication services moves from one based mainly on metering minutes to one based on volume and quality with rating on any basis. In a multi-service environment, handling of tax-related issues is also a major problem. Taxes on vouchers meant for top-up of prepaid balance charge taxes at the point of sale. However tax rates may vary for different types of services in different countries. Managing diverse tax rates from one prepaid balance to another is quite complex.
Implementing real-time and pre-order rating of content services is one of the most arduous tasks in implementing a 3G billing system. Content may come from various quarters bringing to fore the need for integration, and complexities in rating. The main challenge lies in integration of content systems with the service provider’s interfaces. Over and above, any revenue sharing agreement, whether based on proportion of network functionality, distribution capabilities, customer care, or the value of the service or content itself, must be supported by a real-time credit control mechanism. The system also needs to take care of managing issues related to digital content ownership, partner settlements and revenue sharing agreements. It also needs to look into the concurrency aspect of data transactions in real-time.
With opportunities aplenty, the main challenge providers’ face is with the integration of convergent rating and charging with other systems such as product management, customer management, balance management, voucher & recharge management, and billing.
Convergence on the Rise
Integrating convergent solutions with an IN can bridge this gap, delivering the benefits of true convergence between pre and postpaid subscribers to operators.
Most existing providers are already deploying convergent systems to plug the great divide between prepaid and postpaid segments in order to benefit from the vast prepaid subscriber base. Statistics suggest that the annual growth rate on expenditure on new convergent solutions will average around 30% per annum to 2011. Expenditure is forecasted to grow from $299m in 2006 to just over $1.1bn by 2011. Greenfield operators in developing and emerging markets, who are unhampered by the burden of legacy infrastructure, are the chief beneficiaries from deployment of convergent rating and charging systems. Such systems are a boon for those telecom operators whose prepaid subscribers account for a major chunk of their subscriber-base.
Crestel Convergent Rating & Charging Solution
Crestel’s Convergent Rating & Charging system enables service providers to run their prepaid and postpaid operations as a single cohesive business using its real-time, high-volume event handling and seamless subscriber management capabilities. It provides a single platform with real-time rating & charging, balance management, integrated customer management and billing, enabling providers to offer the same levels of service to subscribers regardless of how they pay. Providers deploying Crestel have the opportunity to deliver all those services to prepaid subscribers that were earlier only available to postpaid users by assigning an appropriate plan based on their credit risk and usage pattern.
Click on the image for an enlarged view of the diagram
explaining CRESTEL's Convergent Rating & Charging
