CMP Optional Components

CMP Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. can be deployed as:

• A pure offline solution handling post-event Call Data Records (CDRs) and applying usage The consumption of services, for example a subscriber using call minutes. against allowance allocations

• A pure online solution integrating to a third party Of software; a reusable component developed to be either freely distributed or sold by an entity other than the original vendor of the development platform. OCS such as NetEngage

• A combined offline and online solution providing both online charging for real-time control and offline rating In telecommunications, determining the cost of a particular call. Involving converting call-related data into an equivalent monetary value. for wholesale charging.

Offline-only

An offline-only CMP deployment provides the ability to process post-event CDRs received from the underlying core network In the context of CMP, the infrastructure on which usage of registered customers will be measured – this could be a mobile phone network, broadband network or other non-telecommunications network. components, rate them and apply the usage and charges to existing allowance and spend cap A service for customers that applies a limit to how much usage a customer can consume outside of their allowances or bolt-on extras, preventing spending over a certain amount. allocations. The offline rating engine, SPaRC, can rate any type of usage and bundle usage against existing allowances or charge against an account In the Cloud Monetisation Platform, a billing entity that can be used to manage payments on one or more subscriptions or payments for services. An account can hold details such as payments or invoices. balance. Usage is either bundled against a subscription A billing entity that incurs a charge. Examples include a network attached device whose usage you want to measure and charge for, or a monthly software subscription allowance or rated based on the tariff of the subscription's price plan and the associated pricing rules defined through the Pricing Configuration options.

Offline Charging Overview

For chargeable usage, usage-based discounts can be applied based on any discount scheme allocated to the subscription. Rated usage is also applied against any qualifying spend caps and both allowance and spend caps are monitored against configured notification thresholds. When a threshold is breached, SPaRC will trigger a notification, if configured, to be sent to the end customer In the context of the Cloud Monetisation Platform, an individual or organisation who has signed an agreement to take goods and services from a service provider. A customer receives a bill associated with one or more subscriptions, and can be a single end user or a large company with many subscriptions assigned to one agreement.. The thresholds configured against subscription allowances can be viewed from the Allowance panels in AgentView The graphical user interface of the CMP that is typically used by Customer Service Agents to access CMP customer and billing data. In versions prior to CMP 8.0, this was called the CMP GUI..

Rating can be:

• Fixed rate - a fixed charge irrespective of the service usage duration.

• Flat rate - a rate per time period, for example 10p per minute.

• Tiered rate - accumulated charge for each relevant tier based on the usage duration.

• Threshold rate - the rate used is determined by the threshold level applicable to the usage duration.

Usage can be differentially rated based on:

• The subscription tariff

• The usage type (Voice, Data, SMS Short Message Service. A text messaging service component of most mobile telephone systems. SMS uses standardized communication protocols to enable mobile phone devices to exchange short text messages.)

• The time of day and day of the week

• Whether the usage is mobile originating or terminating

• Where the usage originated within the home network or outside

• The origin and destination zones

• The specific destination address, that is dialled digits.

Offline Rating performs duplicate usage checking before decrementing any bundle allocation or attempting any pricing.

Online Charging

CMP is integrated with an Online Charging System (OCS) for real-time rating, and balance management.

Online Charging Overview

In an online charging implementation, rating, and usage-based discounting are handled by the Online Charging System (OCS) in real-time as the service is consumed. The xDRs produced by the OCS to reflect the rated usage are processed into CMP via the usage interface. CMP performs supplementary classification to support the bill presentation and any reporting requirements of the service provider The owner of the infrastructure in which accounts will be created. The Service Provider can host and operate the instance of CMP, or CMP can be provided as a Managed Service..

OCS Interaction with the network

When a customer initiates a form of usage, a credit control request is made to the OCS. A credit control request asks the OCS for a number of seconds for voice, a volume of data or a Y/N for an event.

The OCS issues the quota to the network and the call/session is connected. The quota amount is configurable in the OCS.

Once the quota is consumed, the network requests for more. As each quota is requested, the OCS Balance is updated immediately.

When the call/sessions ends, the network sends a final request/message to the OCS containing the amount of the last quota allocation used. The OCS Balance is updated immediately to reflect the final total amount of usage consumed.

CMP Interaction with the OCS

xDR External Data Representation. A standard data serialisation format that allows data to be transferred between different computer systems. files are received from the OCS, transformed and individual usage records are given a Call Class Code by CMP Rated Usage functionality.

Once classified, the processing function of Rated Usage allocates classified usage to the required subscription and for postpaid subscriptions the usage records are written to the Unbilled Call Detail file in preparation for invoicing.

All usage rating and discounting is performed in the OCS in real time, not CMP.

Key features of Online Rating