Why CDR Meditation Is an Essential Part of Telecom Billing?

Telecom billing is probably the most confusing and scrutinized task in the telecom industry. The scrutiny comes from customers who are more often than not dissatisfied with their bills. This leads to confusion amongst the telecom vendors who start looking everywhere for new telecom billing solutions. Mostly, this problem arises because the telecom billing software used by them are subpar and do not meet the high requirements of modern-day businesses.

Why Telecom Billing Solutions Are Important?

All the efforts made by telecom service providers in setting up a network will amount to nothing if telecom billing is not up to standards. This is why, telecom billing solutions become important as they play a crucial role in accounting for those services. Not only is the revenue generated by a telecom provider dependent on billing, customers’ trust is also directly connected with the quality of the billing services. For instance, if a customer starts receiving wrong bills, his trust in the services nosedives from that moment onwards. On the other hand, if the billing services are sound, the customer stays faithful and brings in new customers.

CDRs: The Fundamental Unit of Telecom Billing Process

CDR (Call Data Record) is the fundamental unit of telecom billing process. All interactions between the user and telecom networking elements are captured by CDRs. A CDR has the following attributes:

1. Date and starting time of the call

2. Duration of the call

3. Calling party

4. Called party

5. Type of call e.g. voice, SMS, data etc.

6. Unique record sequence number that is used for identification

The captured CDRs are vitally important for the proper operation of a billing system. However, these CDRs are raw in nature, which means they cannot be interpreted by a billing system.

CDR Meditation System: The Unsung Hero of Telecom Billing Solutions

To ensure the captured CDRs are converted into a format that is understood by the billing system, a CDR meditation system is employed. The meditation system receives the unformatted CDRs, converts them into the necessary format and sends them to the billing system. Besides conversion, it also performs the operation of filtering out calls that do not meet set criterion by the telecom vendor. For example, if a call with duration less than 10 second needs to be filtered out, it is done by CDR meditation system. Moreover, if some extra information needs to be provided that is crucial for billing procedure, the meditation system gathers that information based on certain attributes and then sends it to the billing system via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is required for transfer of this information as both billing software and meditation modules are installed on different systems.

After the billing system receives the formatted CDR, it is able to interpret the information and rate the services utilized by customers.

Summary

Billing system in telecom is quite complex and requires processing of data at different levels for accomplishment of billing-related tasks. Although the user is not aware of what goes on behind the scenes, the role of systems like meditation system that converts raw CDRs into formatted CDRs is extremely important. All telecom billing solutions require correct formatting of CDR for reliable and accurate completion of billing tasks.

Don’t Let Your Customers Suffer Anymore, Switch to OSS Telecom Billing Software

Technology does not always change for the best. But, that does not mean it does not try to make things better. When we look from the perspective of telecom industry, BSS and OSS have been two pillars of technology that have transformed the way business takes place. And the good news, everything has changed for the best. Compared with platforms used in the other industries, these two solutions have been in the market for a long time and have garnered trust from most telecom vendors. So, if you are still clinging onto the telecom systems of old, it is probably time to let go and switch to OSS telecom billing software.

Why Change Is Important for All Industries?

When we look at industries of today, hotel industry stands out as the one that has probably seen the biggest transformation in terms of its operations due to technology. In the past, it was tough for hotel chains to manage their properties spread over different parts of the globe. But, with the coming of PMS and cloud-based technologies, almost all hotel chains are using it or planning to use it in the future. A study has revealed that in the next 4-5 years hotel companies will invest up to 8% more in cloud-based technologies.

Compared to hotel industry, operations in telecom industry are much more complex. Monitoring of customer, interactions, provisioning, billing, meditation systems, and the list goes on and on! A telecom operator requires all the help he can get. So, when the solution is staring at you in your face in the form of OSS telecom billing solutions, why not upgrade?

Drawbacks of Legacy Systems

Legacy systems are much more cumbersome and require manual intervention for smooth operation. This may lead to recurring errors that can diminish the customer’s faith in you. Let’s say a customer wants to upgrade his plan and calls up customer support. Upon receiving a request, the agent sends it forward for execution. Now, the system employed by the service provider lacks the service assurance feature normally found in OSS applications. In this case, there is a high probability that the request may be completed but not up to the service level agreement between the provider and the customer. This may reduce the trust of the customer in the system and he may opt for a different provider.

Now, compare this situation with an OSS-backed operation. The OSS telecom billing software has service assurance as one of its primary feature. Unless, there is a terrible malfunctioning of the system (which is very rare), it is highly unlikely that the request will be mismanaged or delivered incorrectly. All the more reason to employ, quality OSS telecom billing solutions, don’t you think so?