Real-Time Charging

CHARGE-IT: Convergent Charging and Service Control

Profitable Service Experiences
In today’s rapidly evolving communications environment, consumers are demanding greater
data connectivity and consuming more bandwidth than ever before. This is being driven by the
mass market uptake of broadband, smartphones and mobile Internet alongside the use of
bandwidth hungry applications like streaming video and P2P.

In mobility, per Megabit (Mb) pricing has only delivered modest growth in revenue and uptake
due to its disconnect with service value and bill shock concerns. At the other extreme, flat-rate
unlimited data pricing plans are forcing service providers to perform frequent upgrades to
access, core and backhaul networks in order to meet service agreements and hence experiencing
costs escalating much more rapidly than revenue. Also many service providers recognise they still
have to un-tap large segments of the market that would only adopt data services if it were
delivered in a format suitable to their economic or demographic outlook, such as pre-paid users,
business users, visitors, social website users and online-gamers.

Real-time and dynamic charging addresses these challenges by enabling many service providers
to evolve their data services towards more profitable and experience rich services that target a
larger market by (also Figure 1) :

• Supporting usage/content-based and innovative pricing options for pre-paid, on-

demand as well as post-paid subscribers based on criteria such as destination,
duration, location, application use, peak/off-peak loads, access method and quota.
• Segmenting open data service with bandwidth caps, application options and fair-
usage limits.
• Supporting granular charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand
Services (e.g. Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV.
• Offering targeted, personalised and reward based price plans linked to usage
criteria that demonstrate value, encourage brand loyalty and ultimately entice
customers away from flat rate and per Mb pricing.
• Offering automated control of hybrid (e.g. personal-business, parent-child)
accounts for organisation and family group appeal.
• Providing real-time advice of charge, notifications and credit/usage limits to
subscribers on home and roaming networks for bill shock management.
• Ensuring auditable service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time
balance and credit management.

Volubill’s CHARGE-IT uniquely integrates real-time charging with service control and traffic inspection
in order to fulfil all these objectives. This integration enables the analysis of multiple real-time
subscriber traffic and profile attributes in the process of personal and dynamic charging (Figure 2).

By deploying CHARGE-IT in the network, service providers can quickly and easily launch
innovative, personalised and dynamic service bundles and promotions that unlock new revenue
streams, and at the same time, control service access and monitor usage quotas.

CHARGE-IT supports all fixed, mobile and fixed mobile convergent (FMC) environments,
irrespective of the underlying network technology including WiMAX, IMS, IP, CDMA, GSM,
UMTS, HSPA and LTE.
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Volubill CHARGE-IT
Volubill’s CHARGE-IT product line consists of:

• CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging

A real-time charging, rating and billing platform that additionally provides balance
management, active mediation, user dialogue management, voucher
management, customer care, self care, product/service catalogue and subscriber
profile repository. CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging can act as a broker between IT
and network domains, working in tandem with external balance/IN platforms, CRM
and data warehouse systems, accounting systems and service delivery platforms.

• CHARGE-IT Service Controller

A real-time router-based service control and quota monitoring platform that
provides deep packet inspection (DPI), quota monitoring, session access
management, dialogue management and charging triggers.

CHARGE-IT brings the charging function into the network and brings together the vital product,
pricing and customer information required to accurately charge customers dynamically at the
very instant they are using a service.

Configuration Options

To support swift time-to-launch, Volubill CHARGE-IT products can be delivered pre-integrated

for end-to-end convergent charging and service control. In addition, Volubill CHARGE-IT
products can be preintegrated with CONTROL-IT Policy Management and Enforcement for a
complete charging and policy control solution.

Policy and charging systems such as CONTROL-IT and CHARGE-IT solve a large number of
business challenges and requirements. Hence specific standard applications such as Usage Policy
Management, Parental Control, 3GPP PCRF and 3GPP OCS can be pre-configured lowering costs
and further accelerating time to launch.

Please see Figure 3.

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CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging
Volubill’s CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging provides real-time charging, service authorisation and
customer management for data services across all payment mechanisms and network types. It
works by directly interacting with network service elements such as B-RAS, GGSN/PDN,
Service/Application Delivery Platforms and Deep Packet Inspection control systems such as CHARGE-
IT Service Controller for the key purpose of real-time charging and revenue assurance (Figure 4).

• CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging uses Diameter, RADIUS, GTP’ and SOAP/XML

interfaces to support real-time credit and charging control interfaces with these
network service elements, to process charging, quota, replenishment, reservation
and charging agreements requests.

• Based on subscriber profile, balance and service catalogues either provisioned

internally or externally, CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging returns charging
responses (Figure 4) to network service elements taking into accounts all sessions
concurrently operated by the subscriber, their specific tariff based on session
context (e.g. roaming, tax, application, payment type, time, discounts) and the
monetary and non-monetary state of their balance and quota.

• Generates and invokes necessary advice of charge/dialogue screen, message based

notifications and billing updates (real-time / batch — internal/external) for
customer management.

• Provides real-time customer-care and customer self-care (including mobile care) to

provide customers and customer representatives direct control over service
configuration, voucher management, top-up, preference setting, electronic bill
presentation and payment (EBPP), customer hierarchy and service upgrade features.

CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging is a modular product that can be deployed standalone or be

deployed in conjunction with existing systems and infrastructure to enhance and maximise these
investments. For example, its customer care and self-care screens can be embedded within the
existing CRM or self-care portal, balance may be held in an external IN platform or subscriber
details held in a subscriber profile repository (SPR).

When deployed alongside standardised service delivery platforms and network access
equipment, CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging fulfils the roles of :

• 3GPP Online Charging System (OCS) with complete Ro/Gy Diameter interfaces

• WiMAX CSN AAA and Revenue Management Solution

• Intelligent AAA server

• Active Mediation

• Federated Subscriber Profile Repository (SPR)

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CHARGE-IT
Convergent Charging Modular Features
CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging is a modular product designed to suit a variety of eco-systems
and real-time service charging requirements. In addition to core charging capabilities, CHARGE-
IT Convergent Charging also offers:

• Integral Master Balance

• Master/Slave Subscriber Profile Repository including Account Hierarchy

• Partner Account Management, Revenue Sharing and Settlement

• Reporting and Management Information Module

• Voucher Management including Top-up and VoIP Calling Cards

• Integrated intelligent AAA

• Electronic Billing and Invoicing including bill cycle management, configurable

invoice generation and payment processing

• Electronic Bill Presentation and Payment (EBPP) via Self-Care

• Account Receivables including Chart of Accounts, GL posting, Adjustments, Bulk

Processing, Settlement and Ageing

Technical Compliance
• Centralised System Monitoring Tools and SNMP Framework

• Open System Architecture and Application Framework for extended system

integration

• Complete System Data Security and Auditability

• Fully distributable, redundant and linear scalable architecture

• Hardware: Sun and HP Servers

• Database: Oracle RDBMS

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CHARGE-IT Service Controller
Volubill’s CHARGE-IT Service Controller (SC) is a real-time deep packet inspection, service control,
quota monitoring and dialogue management platform. It is designed to sit in-line with network
traffic and actively selects traffic to control usage of IP services such as data, content/media,
MMS, Voice over IP (VoIP), downloads and messaging.

The CHARGE-IT Service Controller provides flow control, shallow (5-tuple) and deep packet
inspection for over 200 common protocols independently of the core access network. This allows
the operator to extract granular usage information from network traffic at all levels, from IP
protocol up to application/content, for charging to be based on a variety of factors such as
number of recipients or media types (e,g. MMS), duration for streaming applications with
play/pause (e.g. IPTV/Video), per message for P2P activities (e.g. MSN/Skype), destination accessed
for on-board/off-board services (e.g. host, partner and Internet portals) and current location (e.g.
home location, roaming, national access). As new services are launched, additional service
modules can be added to the system to support new and relevant protocols and service types.

In addition, CHARGE-IT Service Controller has the ability to actively control the session through
traffic filtering, enrichment, redirection, routing and blocking. It can actively monitor subscriber
usage against services quotas. Also dynamic pages such as advice of charge can be presented to
the customer for specific traffic flows as part of the service logic that requires user dialogue
(Figure 5).

CHARGE-IT Service Controller is designed to be network independent and is deployed after

network access gateways, such as a GGSN/PDSN, ASN-GW and B-RASs through router-based
connectivity and traffic selection based load balancing. It interoperates with business systems
using standard interfaces, APIs and protocols such as Diameter, SOAP/XML and GTP’ to enable
full integration with existing billing, IN/balance and charging systems.

When partnered with CHARGE-IT Convergent Charging, CHARGE-IT Service Controller provides
an end-to-end real-time control, charging and usage monitoring system working across all data
and service architectures.

CHARGE-IT Service Controller fulfils the following technical compliance:

• Fulfils the role of Deep Packet Inspection and Network Service Controller with
standardised Gy and Ro Diameter interfaces in addition to RADIUS and GTP’
interfaces.

• Accompanied with off-the-shelf real-time network interfaces to Intelligent

Network, AAA and Billing using SOAP/XML and proprietary mechanisms.

• Scalable, fully-redundant and distributed architecture supporting Tier 1 Grade

Multi-Gigabyte throughput.

• With network grade SNMP and System Monitoring Tools.

• Pre-installed Hardware Operating Environment.

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Unique benefits of CHARGE-IT
• Uniquely integrated service control, traffic inspection and charging
• Modular to suit a wide variety of existing system investments, budgets and ecosystems
• Productised and delivered with business configurations, off-the-shelf network adapters and business-user
empowerment for swift implement and low on-going cost of ownership
• Enables seamless and rapid deployment of data services that are independent of the core access network whilst
preserving existing Network, IN and B/OSS infrastructure investments
• Designed ground-up with redundancy, scalability and network-grade performance for innetwork resilience
and availability
• Linearly scalable as subscriber numbers and network capacity increase in order to support even the most
challenging Tier 1 environments

Unique benefits of working with Volubill

• Specialist in Charging, Policy and Traffic Control Management
• Experience and skills in Network to Business Control
• Aims for ROI within 6 months
• Maximises return on existing investments in network, OSS and BSS systems.
• Strategic Path to SAE-LTE and Broadband Evolution
• Commitment to 3GPP/2, ETSI, IETF and WiMAX Standards

Further Information
Volubill's solutions enable service providers to address multiple business initiatives and requirements, including:

• Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF)

• Fair Usage Management
• Segmented Bandwidth Quota and Caps
• Parental Control
• Bill Shock
• Value Added and Partner Applications.

For further information please contact us at www.volubill.com

About Volubill
Volubill provides innovative real-time charging and policy control solutions to telecoms operators worldwide. Volubill’s
solutions enable operators to manage data services based on subscriber and service centric usage policies, charging models
and session control in order to maximize revenues and service experience and eliminate churn. Founded in 2001, Volubill is a
global company with in excess of 70 customers world-wide.

© All rights reserved. Volubill 2009 Compiled & created Nov 09

For further information please contact info@volubill.com or go to www.volubill.com

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