August 22, 2002
Meet Point Billing Changes Will Allow LECs to Avoid Waiting on Their Connecting Partners
Starting August 31, meet point billing summary records will no longer be part of the EMI call records used between LECs to bill each other and IXCs. Instead, the summary records will be replaced with detail records as part of the Multiple Exchange Carrier Access Billing (MECAB) version 8 guidelines issued by the ATIS Ordering and Billing Forum (OBF) this past June.
Currently, LEC partners have to wait longer than they'd like to get those records -- as much as 30 to 45 days. The change should cut that time dramatically. Such detail records will permit carriers with end offices (EO) terminating traffic that has flowed through another carrier's tandem to bill within as little as 2-3 days without having to wait on the tandem owner, and vice versa.
For example, it will enable terminating CLECs, or those that lease UNEs from ILECs, to receive records daily from the ILEC's tandem rather than wait for the ILEC to send a bill through its normal billing cycle. Alternatively, the tandem ILEC can do the recording, getting all its usage from the originating CLEC, who in the past billed the IXC first and then passed the data upstream to the ILEC - in this carrier access example, the incumbent will be able to bill the IXC directly from the CLEC's records.
These new standards could have positive consequences for all intercarrier billers. That is if the carriers can use the more detailed records -- many will be hard-pressed to sort through the new process and the more complex detail records. In addition, IXCs may be burdened with having to validate meet point bills from multiple carriers using different billing periods.
Related story: OBF Issues MECAB Draft Version 8
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