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Interconnect
and Roaming Assurance
Even
though the carrier-to-carrier billing activities are considered to
be "back room" kinds of activities does not mean that they are not
critical to a comprehensive revenue assurance approach. Especially
when you consider two critical things:
First - that inter-carrier
traffic can represent as much as 75% of the revenues for many firms
Second - that inter-carrier
accounts payable represent, by far, the single largest cash outflow
that the carrier needs to deal with.
Both of these
issues make interconnect and roaming revenue assurance key areas.
Challenges of
Inter-carrier Billing
All of the challenges presented by
"normal" revenue assurance are greatly exaggerated when you decide
to take on inter-carrier billing activities. These come
from many sources including:
Inter-carrier and roaming
contracts are extremely complex in nature and are often
fraught with technicalities and seemingly illogical
characteristics, due to the
fact that the rules are typically dictated by regulators and
imposed upon the carriers.
With the other types of billing
and revenue assurance, your organization has complete control over
all of the different systems that participate in the process. In the
case of inter-carrier settlement, you have no control over the other
parties systems and personnel. This makes the job of balancing,
reconciling and checking especially difficult.
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Special
Formats for CDRs
Because the formats for
inter-carrier billing have to be standardized in order to reduce the
cost of performing interconnect for all carriers, a broad range of
standardized formats have been developed for each area. The
international standards for CDR exchange have been around for
decades, and in the wireless industry we have several generations of
formats to deal within including :
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CIBER (Cellular Inter-carrier Billing Exchange Roamer) ,
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TAP (Transferred Account Procedure) records with several
versions including Tap 1, TAP 2, Tap 2+, Tap 3, and TAP 3.9.
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The principle approach used to
assure revenues in the inter-carrier area are similar to those used
in the others, but they involve different datasets, different
systems, and different rules for interpretation, depending upon the
inter-carrier regulations in place. Some of the more common
assurance processes include:
| Verification that all
inter-carrier calls are being captured and processed by the
switch and mediation and being forwarded to the interconnect. or
TAP processing program correctly. |
| Verification that the
interconnection or Roaming traffic processing system is
consolidating traffic and rating it correctly. |
| Reconciliation of own system
totals (interconnect or roaming) against invoice amounts from
other carrier or clearinghouse. |
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Verification of Inter-carrier CDR Capture and Processing
One place to look for problems
with your inter-carrier traffic handling is within the
network/CDR handling process itself. The first step therefore,
is to verify that the CDR generation, capture and processing
systems are performing accurately. The process that we go
through in these cases is pretty much the same as for all other
types of CDRs. A complete job of network, mediation and CDR
transport processes are checked, specifically for the traffic
that meets this criteria.
Luckily , in the case of
interconnect at least, the job of verification at this level is
made somewhat easier by the fact that all CDRs that need to be
examined will be coming from a particular switch (or POI - point
of interconnect). This allows the analyst to simply identify the
POI of interest and then trace it's CDRs through the processing
chain.
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Verification of the Integrity of the Inter-carrier Billing
System
The second area of validation for inter-carrier and roaming
traffic is the review of he integrity
of the inter-carrier billing system (or TAP file processing
system) itself. At this stage, we need to validate that the
numbers being created by the system accurately reflect what was
fed to it via the CDRs that were received. 
The method used to validate the
system depends upon which of the many different brands of
interconnection or TAP file handling system you are using, and
the nature of the traffic being traced.
In general, inter-carrier billing systems can optionally perform
all or some the following functions:
1. Summarization of the # calls
and duration of calls for each carrier
2. Execution of a rating engine
which rates all of the CDRs presented
3. The calculation of a summary
level of the billing totals for each carrier
Verification of these functions
is typically done on a carrier by carrier basis. The most common
method of verification being to develop summary totals for each
of these parameters from the mediation system or from a data
warehouse used to stage the CDRs, and then verifying those
totals against the reports issued by the system.
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Inter-carrier
Reconciliation and Auditing
Finally and most critically, we come to the area where the vast
majority of the leakage and cost savings are found when undergoing
the assurance process with inter-carrier traffic, and that is
performing an audit to be sure that the amounts that the other
carriers are claiming are in fact accurate. The stories of
inaccurate inter-carrier billing (with economic values often
measured in the millions of dollars per month) that were uncovered
and corrected by revenue assurance activities are well known across
the industry.
The primary method utilized to perform this kind of audit is through
the creation of a special file, database or data warehouse. This
system has to be developed to handle extremely high volumes of data,
since it needs to hold one or more months of history to be
effective. Once the system is built, the analyst uses it to generate
detailed "views" of the carrier in questions traffic. When the
numbers proposed by the other carrier are not in alignment, further
drill down into the detail , and backtracking into the integrity of
the CDR handling flow are performed to assure your findings.
Ultimately, with solid proof in hand, the issue can be brought to
mediation, or to the attention of regulators.
Once the system is built, the even bigger challenge comes when
attempting to verify the amounts that the other carrier claims are
accurate. An intimate knowledge of the inter-carrier settlement
policies and the current practices and conventions is critical to
the successful execution of this kind of revenue assurance exercise.
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There are actually 4 standard
standards for the clearance of international and national level
interconnection, depending upon the country and the regulatory
environment.
In the US, the entire inter-carrier clearance process has been
driven by the break up of ATT. At the time of divestiture,
regulations were put in place which established standard revenue
sharing models for the carrier that handled the long distance, and
the carriers at the local ends (the last mile) who provided access
to the long distance carrier. Since these carriers provided the
consumer with access to the long distance carrier, the process was
called "Carrier Access Billing".
In the rest of the world the
process is known as interconnect billing. Under this arrangement the
handler parses the call so that all carriers of the call can be
compensated for the portion they carry. The interconnect portion is
from Originating POI to Terminating POI.
There are three main methods of
revenue sharing within the Interconnect model: direct billing,
cascade billing, and the traditional International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) settlement process.
| Direct Billing
- each carrier bills and is
billed for the portion that they carry. |
| Cascade Billing
- billing is only allowed in an either upstream or downstream
manner. |
| ITU Settlement Process
- In the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) settlement
process, the traffic originator reports traffic to all
transiting and terminating operators. For example, between two
network operators with direct or indirect access to each other,
traffic is measured and priced according to their agreement
negotiated within the framework of ITU rules. Prices are based
on Total Accounting Rate (TAR). Each operator renders
monthly declarations of traffic sent to the other operator.
Settlements typically occur on a quarterly basis. The last
mile has been largely ignored, as there is usually only one
local company. |
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The the reconciliation of roaming
traffic is a little more difficult for several reasons. The two
principle methods are:
| TAP file processing via a
clearinghouse - under this technique a third party
clearinghouse organization works as the intermediary on TAP file
processes. This helps standardize and regularize the process of
reconciliation between carriers, and allows each carrier to
concentrate on the creation of one standard roaming interface
and methodology, eliminating a large amount of duplication of
effort. |
| Direct inter-carrier
reconciliation - similar to the standard interconnect technique.
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Revenue Assurance Library
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