Network & Billing Update Q2 2008

Q2 2008

The ATS Network & Billing Update is published by Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc. (www.atso.com), a revenue and service assurance solutions provider. This free newsletter is a guide to telecommunications OSS, billing, and revenue assurance news and other telecom industry analysis. To unsubscribe, contribute an article, or for offbeat news, please scroll to the end. Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and co-workers!

In this issue:

Top 10 ROC Initiatives for 2008-2009

ATS Receives Outstanding Performance Award from AT&T

There's More to Network Assurance than Networks

OffBeat News: City Proposes Tax on Texting

Top 10 ROC Initiatives for 2008-2009
By: Randy Guthrie, President, ATS

Those of you who follow this newsletter recall that last quarter we talked about the convergence of Revenue Assurance (RA) and Customer Relationship and Profit Management (CRM and CPM). In order to prepare for what we believe will be a customer and technology driven shift in RA strategy, ATS hit the road during the second quarter of 2008 to ensure that our revenue assurance 2.0 goals are aligned with the goals of the industry. In this issue of Advanced Views I would like to share the results of our mini-market survey.

Here are the top 10 Revenue Operations Center (ROC) initiatives for 2008-2009 as described to us by key players in our industry.

Recovering stranded assets - As carriers expand to meet customer demand, various databases are rapidly updated on a daily basis. Over time, these databases become out of sync with what is actually provisioned and can lead to unbilled revenue as well as unnecessary capital spending. Let’s take a look at an example such as Office Equipment (OE) Inventory. When an active line is disconnected from service, the OE is supposed to be released from the inventory database and reused for a new service order. However, sometimes the OE is never released and appears to be active in the database. Eventually, the carrier is forced to purchase unnecessary additional line equipment which can be very costly. ATS tools such as SimCall Lite can be used to perform such database audits to ensure that carriers are not spending excess cash in a time when it is not easy to come by.

Inter-carrier billing - This old chestnut isn’t going away – in fact it’s getting more complicated. We still haven’t figured out how to simplify Inter-carrier billing in any way that even remotely resembles an easy to implement standard. Tools like ATS’ Match Call make the inter-carrier audit process much easier but judging from the number of inter-carrier disputes that are already in litigation, and the amount of money involved, it appears that ROC managers will be busy trying to establish better controls on the inter-carrier billing process.

Bundled services - All of the companies we spoke with indicated that they were going to step up audits on bundled services. Bundling requires a service order (see item 3 on this list) and remember, although the service order process has improved, bundling USOCs are still convoluted and prone to error. ROC managers tell us they want to make the customer happy with bundles but in many cases the reverse happens. If the wrong USOC is assigned the customer could be over billed for their service bundle. The service bundle is designed to provide stickiness and therefore ROCs are going to be working hard to ensure that these bundles are ordered, provisioned and billed correctly.

Get RA metrics on miscellaneous content - Music downloads, YouTube clips, text messages, ring tones, and other Internet based services are still billed on a pay as you go basis. If call detail records can get lost why can’t these?

IPTV, Pay per View (PPV), Video on Demand (VOD) - Developing new BSS/OSS architectures using the developing new standards is going to be imperative if new services like triple play offerings are going to be rolled out to mass markets. While the industry has successfully implemented service bundles including Internet and phone service, the integration of IPTV is going to be a challenge. This is true because IPTV is a fundamentally different type of service offering for most telecom carriers. One of the problems is that IPTV in many cases brings a partner relationship that does not exist with the other service bundles. In all likelihood, the TV content partner will not conform to telecom industry infrastructures. In addition, IPTV has the potential to become a unique, new interface to the end user. If you have used services like Apple TV you know that a subscriber can buy or rent a movie right from the television or PC. This unique capability will change the order fulfillment process and will create several new touch points for revenue leakage including revenue sharing arrangements with content providers. ROCs are gearing up for assuring revenue for what is essentially a brand new process.

Usage and mediation validation - One of the first RA initiatives was usage hold file analysis. Once carriers realized that billing and network functions are not separate, independent functions, the amount of money in usage hold files started to decrease. Trunk groups not recording woke everyone up to the fact that network and billing functions are related. Mediation is now under the microscope for several of the companies we spoke with. Mediation filters are an important cause of revenue leakage and with new mediation platforms being sold every day, this problem is moving up on the list of ROC initiatives. There is sometimes a serious lack of mediation expertise particularly in small carriers and the implementation of these new systems is becoming increasingly challenging. A well-established mediation vendor can help guide a carrier through the creation of mediation filters but if in house expertise to establish mediation filters is lacking, outside subject matter expertise should be sought out. ATS mediation experts have helped several companies change out mediation platforms with as little as a few weeks of consulting. ROC mangers are placing increased emphasis on the mediation filter problem and this year will be a year of mediation audits and new metrics for many of the companies we spoke with.

Extend the reach of revenue assurance at the switch - ATS’ SimCall clients have been telling us that they plan to expand switch translations testing to protect the POTS revenue stream (see item 2). They also want to expand testing to other TDM switch types such as the Siemens, VoIP soft-switches, and wireless switches. Last year ATS released a new Siemens module and based on industry demand, we are now trialing translations testing in the Tandem switches. The SimCall Tandem testing module is an exciting new addition to the SimCall suite of products because ATS will now be able to test calls that are handed off to the Tandem whether they be landline, wireless, or VoIP. We will be announcing the results of those trials as soon as they are completed.

Seek tools and metrics to ensure accuracy of the service order - The Service order has long been one of the first touch points for establishing or creating changes to a customer’s account. System edits have matured but human error still creeps into this very important process and our clients tell us that the service order process still (even after all these years) causes significant revenue leakage. In the worse-case scenario service order errors cause leakage and customer irritation. The ROC will continue to expend resources to monitor error hold files with an eye towards improving flow-through and service order accuracy.

Protect traditional POTS revenue stream - POTS revenues still account for as much as 60% of an incumbent LEC’s revenue. The investment in POTS has already been made and this investment is yielding a very high return. Because of this, most providers are actively working to protect this investment. Basic revenue assurance programs like call generation and call simulation will continue to be among the core tools for keeping this important revenue stream producing cash.

Reduce/Control churn - Churn remains a serious problem for all providers. Some providers told us that they have churn under control but they realize that all providers are only an iPhone like phenomenon away from facing a mass migration of customers to another carrier. No one expects this problem to go away and everyone is thinking of creative ways to hold onto market share. Marketing programs are being integrated with revenue assurance plans in most companies we spoke with, and services like ATS’ Market Watch will start to play an important role in ROC programs as RA activities move into the marketing arena.

This is an exciting time for ROC managers and the new services and service bundles that are being deployed are going to make for a busy second half of the year. We plan to closely monitor industry trends and successes and will keep you abreast of new developments as we learn of them.

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ATS Receives Outstanding Performance Award from AT&T

Wayne, NJ, June 18, 2008 – Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc (ATS), a supplier of Revenue Assurance solutions for communications providers, recently had two employees receive an award from AT&T for “Outstanding Performance and Contribution.”

The awards were presented to ATS’ Paul Gilbert and Lee Helwig for their contributions to the AT&T SimCall Six Sigma DMADV Project which ensures quality throughout the SimCall switch audit process. AT&T uses SimCall on a daily basis to ensure the highest level of network integrity for their customers. “We are very honored to receive the Six Sigma Award,” says Randall Guthrie, ATS’ President. “We’re happy to make a contribution to the Six Sigma DMADV Project and look forward to continuing to do so in the future.”

About SimCall:

SimCall is the industry’s leading tool to ensure network integrity by validating the accuracy of switch translations. The tool is unique in that it simulates every dialing combination possible in a fraction of the time it would take to generate such calls. The call simulations are also done off-line so there is absolutely no strain on the switch being tested and no false inflation of call detail records detected.

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There's More to Network Assurance than Networks
Courtesy of B/OSS

When was the last time you had to call your water provider or the electric company? Telecom used to be that way. Telephone services were so reliable because, relatively speaking, they were the same as electricity or water services; every customer received the same thing and every customer was hooked up the same way. As long as all the connections were healthy, the telephone service was so reliable as to be effectively invisible. But telecom isn’t like that anymore. As a result, managing the connections is no longer sufficient to ensure a quality customer experience.

Network Assurance

In this expanded operations environment, a better customer experience requires a better approach to network assurance. Every one of the 23 service providers interviewed by Stratecast for its upcoming report, “It’s Always Been About the Customer – Results of a Stratecast Survey of CSP Network Assurance Strategies,” complained about the variety and complexity of network and service element interfaces. Because the networks, services and customers now are tightly integrated, many unintended consequences could result from modifying an interface. Beyond the cost of implementing and maintaining this myriad of interfaces, there is now a genuine risk that any change to an interface could affect adversely the performance of the network and services.

Click Here for the full story

The #1 tool to guarantee network assurance is SimCall. Tier 1 carriers throughout North America use SimCall on a daily basis to ensure network integrity for their customers. For more information on how to guarantee network assurance for your customers, contact Ryan Guthrie at ryanguthrie@atso.com.

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OffBeat News: City Proposes Tax on Texting
Courtesy of Cellular News

Voters living in the Californian city of Sacramento will be given the opportunity to vote on a measure which will extend an existing utility tax to include SMS messages. Currently the tax is applied to voice calls from mobile phones, along with electricity, gas and television services but does not include text messages.

While the measure will extend the utility tax to text messages, it will also lower the tax rate from 7.5% to 7% - and also include internet phone services for the first time.

City of Sacramento Treasurer Russ Fehr cannot say how much revenue will be raised by widening the tax take, but did say that the current utility tax raises some US$20 million per year for the city.

Click Here for the full story.

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