Billing and Charging Evolution

TOMIA’s Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE) service provides mobile operators with flexible and reliable wholesale billing and settlement for IoT use cases and 5G services.

Challenges

The future of settlement, with the exponential growth in the number of wholesale agreements, new charging models and multiple customer segments will require more complex commercial strategies and advanced automation.

Monetize IoT Devices

Signaling information is an important asset for detecting permanent roaming devices, and yet, it is rarely used for charging purposes. With a 30+% YoY growth in IoT traffic and the introduction of 5G data driven services, operators will continue to implement differentiated commercial strategies based on registration or access fees, SLAs and other QoS parameters.
Therefore, presence information derived from signaling events is vital.

Inefficiencies of current processes

Business complexity in wholesale is increasing due to new charging models, management of multiple customer segments, especially enterprises, and the introduction of new technologies such as 5G. The current offline settlement process, where multiple billing systems with decentralized information are used is slow, prone to errors and does not prevent the financial risk of significant cash flow losses.

Control of critical data

Tier 1 operators often require control of critical data for several business purposes. Since data driven services decrease the need for transaction exchange between operators, the data processing for the purpose of settlement becomes increasingly sensitive, especially in countries that apply GDPR regulations or within organizations with comprehensive IT security requirements, against unauthorized access.

Presenting TOMIA’s BCE service

Be ready today for the emerging requirements and opportunities driven by the growth of MIoT and 5G services.

The forefront of settlement evolution

Flexibility and efficiency will enable mobile operators to execute the vital transition to ‘BCE wholesale settlement service’ seamlessly, allowing immediate realization of new business opportunities.

Business Benefits

While we enter a hybrid period, where traditional and future settlement processes will co-exist for several years to come, business automation is key. TOMIA’s BCE service automates end-to-end business requirements, allowing mobile operators to focus on MIoT and 5G opportunities with reduced operational cost.

  • Efficient support for current and future wholesale charging models
  • Charging based on multiple parameters such as presence and SLA
  • Customer segmentation through flexible aggregation options
  • Blockchain compatible and agnostic to DLT network
Operational Benefits

TOMIA offers multiple deployment and support options. The service is available on cloud or deployed locally as turnkey software, enabling faster and simpler rollout of the BCE settlement process. It can be offered as a managed service or self-managed with optional consulting services on top.

  • Faster service rollout
  • Fully automated reconciliation analysis at multiple levels
  • Online revenue assurance to avoid duplication of traffic events
  • Adherent to data privacy and GDPR regulations
  • Fully compliant with GSMA and industry standards

Use Cases

MIoT agreements

MIoT agreements

NB-IoT and LTE-M are being used across multiple segments with the potential for many more. However, the cost to serve small segments may be higher than their revenue potential, and as a result, operators tend to ignore them. TOMIA’s BCE automates business and operational tasks end-to-end to significantly reduce the cost to serve and monetize the large market of the long tail. It equips operators to win a larger market share with limited competition, whilst maximizing profitability.

Automation through collaboration

Automation through collaboration

Although still an emerging technology, the adoption of blockchain is on the rise with the promise to revolutionize the B2B relationship through collaboration. Blockchain will accelerate digital transformation strategies. It includes agreement alignment, automated reconciliation and dispute resolution workflow to accelerate settlement and improve cash flow. To scale up and get mass adoption, TOMIA’s BCE service can be integrated with multiple workflows and DLT technologies.

Local BCE deployment

Local BCE deployment

Data-centric services with home-routed traffic allow full visibility of roaming activity. Operators may prefer to keep critical data in-house for settlement or other purposes such as the combination of registration and usage events for IoT monetization, provisioning of steering changes, or feeding local analytics to enriched information. Local deployment removes the dependency on third parties to implement business related changes and facilitates data privacy management.

How will operators benefit from BCE & Blockchain in roaming?