Triple Play billing solution for India’s leading Telco

The client is the world’s 7th largest and India’s largest telecom service provider. A fully owned Public Sector Undertaking of the Government of India, the Telco has a network of over 45 million PSTN lines covering 5000 towns.

The client also has the largest footprint for GSM in the country, which covers more than 3900 cities/towns across India. The GSM network coverage extends to almost all district headquarters, important tourist centers and National/state highways of the country

The Requirement

The Telco offers its subscribers a gamut of services including basic telephony (both fixed and wireless), cellular services, data, National Long Distance, Internet, etc. In addition to these services, the client was looking at providing various value-added services to its subscribers, including high-speed data, voice and video transmission on Broadband via VSAT as an alternative to the Dial-up mode.

In line with this goal, and in order to redefine its telecom services, it required a customer care and billing solution to support its VSAT system for Value Added Services.

The client required a solution that covered:

• The billing of triple play services
  The billing solution requirement was to produce consolidated bills for triple play services i.e. voice, video and data services.
• Hot billing and automatic discounting
  The system was expected to facilitate the hot billing and automatic SLA based discounting features for above-mentioned services.
• Mediation for multiple formats of CDRs
  To capture the CDRs/transaction details from diverse network elements in different formats and to convert them into a single billable format was a key pre-requisite for services to be billed successfully.
• Comprehensive Web Self Care System
  An interface to the customers’ online account management facilities was required for customer self care.
• Interface with multiple proprietary systems
  The billing system was required to interface with various types of network elements and third party software utilities for successful information exchange like Cisco Call Manager, provisioning utility, etc.

Solution

In order to cater to the above-mentioned requirements, Infozech provided the comprehensive billing system - eBill alongside integrated in-house products like i-Mediator and i-Rater.

In providing the solution, Infozech had to combat the following challenges:

• Comprehensive billing and customer care system
  Infozech deployed eBill that provided all the necessary components required of billing of Triple play services and a comprehensive customer care solution.
• i-Mediator deployment
  Infozech provided i-Mediator software for collecting proprietary format CDRs from the respective servers, converting them into the required format and providing them to eBill.
• Web Self Care
  The Infozech provided an interface for customer to sign up through the web that enabled them for online account management.
• SLAs (Service Level Agreement) Management
  SLAs contain clauses that define a specified level of service, support options, incentive awards for service levels exceeded and/or penalty provisions for services not provided. These details can be managed in the Customer Care and Billing system deployed with the client.
• Interfaces with multiple systems
  The billing system was seamlessly integrated with various components like a homegrown provisioning system, Cisco Call Manager, Bandwidth Management utilities, etc.

Benefits

The client achieved the following benefits from the Infozech solution:

• Single face solution
  Infozech’s product integrated all the diverse services and offered a single face solution for the telco’s staff and customers.
• High scalability
  The solution offered to the client would enable the customer to scale its services from a relatively smaller base of operations to a large size with just the addition of new hardware components
• Flexibility of the system in addition of new services
  Infozech’s offering, with its finely tuned processes and minimum customization requirement, helped the client overcome challenges and take care of complex customer services needs.
• Seamless integration due to modular nature
  Infozech’s Billing System was provided as a standalone entity without any redundancy. The modular solution seamlessly integrated with third party applications, with minimal effort in terms of customization.
• Savings on Operational Costs
  Infozech provided the training to the client’s employees thereby empowering them to manage day-to-day operation. The company also provided the operator with high caliber 24/7 support enabling the reduction of ongoing operational cost.