Trouble Ticket Management in Telecom Domain

Trouble Ticket Management in Telecom Domain

What is a Telecom Trouble Ticket?
Trouble tickets are formal records that identify a problem, and then assign responsibility for analysis and resolution of that problem. A ticket could be as simple as a note of paper with description of the issue, its status, the date of the complaint, name of the complainant, and the resolution date, etc.

· A trouble ticket problem can be related with:
· A phone set
· A phone service
· A voicemail
· Long distance authorization codes
· Service down time

The customer raises a trouble ticket, if there is an issue in the telecom service. The problems encountered by customers can vary from customer to customer, place to place, but on a broader level Trouble Tickets can be categorized into Telecom exchange end or Customer equipment end, which can be further subdivided to categories on the basis of skill set requirements. Whenever a customer experiences any problem with the issues listed above; a trouble ticket is raised to a service provider. A program called Request Tracker (RT) keeps track and points out the details of the complaints. This allows the tester to inform more accurately about how long will it take for a request to be processed and performed. The tester sends the customer an email to notify; when the work will be completed.

An ideal trouble ticket resolution application should be able to:

· Ensure that network and other offered services are well managed and any escalated issue is resolved promptly
· Determines, which problem should be considered as urgent
· Creation of complete task report from resolution, closure to archiving
· The application should have an archived database that can be used by the tester to analyze and resolve any impending issue related with trouble ticket
· The application should be cost effective and resolve any issue promptly
· The application should be user friendly and easy to learn
· The application should be flexible enough to be customized as per client requirement
· The application should be able to split and merge existing trouble tickets
· The application should have an efficient resource management system
· The application should have automatic ticket escalation as well as shift escalation system.
· Report Trouble Ticket efficiently. In an ideal Trouble Ticket application, the Customer reports the fault by using the Trouble Ticket Reporting front end of the application or by calling the helpdesk. The customer has to answer the predefined intelligent set of questions, which also initiates the Fault diagnosis process. If the fault is similar to the one already reported then it is marked as a repeat Trouble Ticket. Customer is provided with the Trouble Ticket ID so that customer can check the status of the Trouble Ticket.
· Diagnosis the trouble issues efficiently. A Trouble Ticket application should have a workflow automation engine to test necessary tasks such as line test, network test to detect the cause and category of the problem reported.
· Provide regular updates to client. The Client should receive the regular updates pertaining to current status of the trouble ticket.
· Fix an appointment in case In case the resolution requires Customer site visit,
· Maintain the trouble Ticket Closure reports.

An on-line Trouble Ticket form should have these fields given below:

· First Name
· Last Name
· Company
· E-mail
· Phone
· Hosting OS Platform
· Account ID
· Username
· Account Password
· Problem Subject

Telecom Billing Process

Telecom Billing Process

Telecom billing process comprises provisioning the services within the billing system. importing the CDRs from various sources and then calculation of rates, billing and at last invoice generation.
In a nutshell Telecom billing is the process of gathering and grouping telecommunication service for specific accounts or customers, producing and sending invoices, and keeping records of payments made to customer accounts.
This diagram displays the basic functions of the CDR processing module of a billing system, such as how different event sources are received by the call processing system. These event sources can be from the network elements or from other companies that have provided services to customers. These records are normalized to a common CDR format understandable to the system and duplicate CDRs are eliminated. Identification information in each call detail record is used to match the record to an account in the customer database; For example, when two fields (pairs) are matched with each other, such as City and Zip Code in the system. The customer's information fetched in the system decides the rate plan to use in charge calculation. The rating database uses rate tables, the selected rate plan of the customer, and possibly other important information like distance etc. to calculate the actual charge for each individual call. This information is added in to the CDR and it is placed in the bill pool to generate the bill. If there are any issues with call processing, then the call detail records are sent to investigation for further analysis.

Wholesale Billing Management

Wholesale Billing Management

The Wholesale billing management is a crucial aspect of Telecommunication industry.Wholesale billing management comprises supply of various kinds of services under a range of supply contracts with customers.The range of supply contracts with customers can include:

Formal billing dispute management
This contract has to be complied by both, the Wholesale supplier and the customer. This policy sets out a guideline about how most billing disputes can be managed.
The customers are carriers, service providers and Internet service providers.
The Wholesale supplier does not accept or deal directly with the end-users of its customers but addresses end-user billing disputes referred to it by an end-user’s service providers.

A customer-billing dispute can be an alleged inaccuracy, omission or error in relation to a charge on a bill, which falls into one or several billing dispute categories. Complaint about a disputed bill does not exempt an end-user from paying bill in a stipulated time frame as per contract guidelines. In specific circumstances, contract terms can allow withholding of the disputed amount until resolution of the dispute.
Billing dispute process timeframes are prescribed in clear business days for investigation and resolution. The timeframes are generally based on customers’ contractual terms and conditions.
An end-user can lodge billing dispute complaint by using a Wholesale billing dispute standard form, which can be downloaded from wholesale suppliers’ website or by sending an email to wholesale disputes and claims team.

Generic billing dispute categories are as follows:

Missing billing details in billing
A monthly invoice charges have been generated by a service that has been or should have been terminated.
Additional information about billing is missing.Discount calculation is missing or improper or in contrast to a discount plan.
Accounts unknown to Customer

Factors affecting concurrent Wholesale billing system:

Concurrent billing architecture
The current telecom industry is highly complex and the wholesale billing architecture should be flexible enough to support a wide range of various kinds of billing models on a single comprehensive platform. This platform should support complex agreements pertaining to revenue sharing.

New revenue resources
Wholesale billing systems must be able to provide full support for processing data and wide-ranging content apart from traditional voice traffic, for different complex multi-steps and multi-components rating rules. This requires the ability to account for non-usage events such as leased lines and facility rentals, as well as one-off charges for IP peering agreements. Operators need to deploy sophisticated cross product and cross-partner discounting features for the modeling of intricate business-to-business content settlement agreements.

Telecom Billing - Rating Engine

Telecom Billing - Rating Engine

The core of any telecommunications billing solution is its rating engine. Limitations in the rating engine's capabilities can lead to miss opportunities in the market and an inability to refine service offerings to meet evolving customer needs. In telecommunication domain rating is the activity of determining the cost of a particular call. The rating process involves converting call related data into a monetary equivalent assessment.

Call-related data is evaluated at various points in the network. This processed data is proven and authentic and can be used for charging.

Rating engine typically uses some or all of the following types of data about a call:

Time property of the call (day of a week, a date, time of a day)
Amount of usage (duration of a call, amount of data, number of messages, number of ring tones)
Destination of the call (domestic, international etc.)
Origin point of the of call to retrieve information about the location of the caller
Premium charges (third party charges for various services)

Typically individual calls are rated and then the rated amount is sent to a billing system to provide a comprehensive bill to the subscriber. Often the rating system is a module of a telecom billing system. Modern rating engines can also be currency neutral. Certain multi-national telecommunication providers provide the ability for subscriber’s settlement in multiple currencies. In this scenario the rating engine generates a currency neutral billing record.
A rating system must be flexible enough to the frequently changing pricing policies, as policies are defined as per current market requirements.

Rating Engine Architecture
A typical rating engine can have three-tier architecture:

Tier1
Tier one is the interface for external users. Clients, remote hosts, and external applications can enter, inspect, modify data, and initiate processes in comprehensive billing.
Tier2
Tier two manages transactions, and returns results to, the first tier, as well as manages all database access.
Tier3
The database tier comprises any RDBMS database, which stores business, administrative, and configuration data used in estimation of billing.

Rating Overview:
Various service providers such as AirCell, Airtel, Vodafone, MTS, Uninor, Idea etc. are available in market. To lure the customer, various skims are advertised in market, which leads to fierce competition in telecommunication space. The rating has also become complex as the customer requirements vary day by day.
There are various measures to calculate the rate for services provided by the service providers. The Rating is divided into seven operations:

1. The balance management is the first operation, which provides event authorization, advice of charge information, and customer credit reservations.

2. The event normalization is the second operation, in which input event and transaction data is converted into a standard format for storage in the billing database. The generated CDR/EDR may not be in a form suitable for the particular rating system. The mediation software normalizes the CDR/EDR and transforms the data in a format that is suitable for the rating system. To perform the rating calculations it is necessary to produce a Call detail record or Event data record. Event data records are used to calculate charges for various services provided by the service providers such as selling ring tones.

3. The event rating is the third operation, in which the normalized event records are aggregated and rated by applying the appropriate tariffs.

4. The event output is the fourth operation, in which the rated event records are stored in the billing database.

5. Fifth operation is the billing, in which the billed event records are aggregated, and additional charges and discounts can be applied For example, rating for multimedia services depends on various factors such as, number of minutes to download, copyright cost, clauses in service level agreement etc. This rating can incorporate non-network related parameters. The another example is, when usage above a certain amount is triggered in the billing sub-system, the rating engine may assign a lower rate for the user. This is also known as an adjusting rate.

6. Invoicing, in which billing data is combined with customer detail records and incorporated into an invoice or statement image.

7. Invoice output, in which invoice and statement images are printed or converted for electronic distribution.
The seven operations are carried out by the following three major components:

The rating server, which authorizes real-time events, handles credit checking, and passes completed events on to the rating engine to be stored in the database. It involves
Transaction management
Cache management
Connection authentication
Multiple client access
Asynchronous alerts

The rating engine, which combines normalization and rating. The rating engine is a series of pipelined processes, which primarily communicate using shared memory. Rating input is raw records; output is a database record containing normalized events and charges rated against the events (billed events).

The billing engine, which passes information back to the rating engine for the generation of recurring charges and adjustments, calculates billing charges, generates invoice data, and creates the invoice images for printing. Billing operations include the selection, sorting, and output of invoices or statements to printers or other output devices.

Billing Mediation Systems

A billing mediation system is used to convert certain data types to other data types, usually for billing purposes. Telephone companies, which typically need to process Call data records use billing mediation systems.

The Call data records can hold data such as NPX,NPA, call duration, peak time flag, and call length etc. as per client requirement. This data can be represented in binary formats. The billing mediation platform typically reads this data and converts in to common normalized format.

Billing Systems and all other downstream systems, in turn, converts this data to its own understandable format.

Billing mediation systems mediate among a variety of other systems. The upstream systems are network elements, such as telephone switches, and the downstream systems perform accounting, auditing, archiving, or bill-generation functions. The mediation system collects, collates and prepares data for analysis by the downstream systems, which accept data only in a limited set of formats.

A mediation system performs the following tasks:

• Collection and validation of CDRs

• Filtering out of non billing-relevant CDRs

• Collating

• Correlation of different input sources CDRs

• Duplicate Record Detection

• Aggregation of partial CDRs related to the same call

• Format change and CDRs normalization

• Business transformation of data

• Decoding/Encoding

• Aggregation or Correlation

• Buffering

• Cloning

• Sorting

• Downstream Format Mapping

• Header and Trailer generation

• Downstream Distribution

• Error Messaging and Alarms

• Auditing and Reports

• Reconciliation

• Reference Data Configuration

• Provisioning services for the subscription.

Mediation is the first step after receiving a CDR fror billing. The mediated CDR is forwarded to a rating engine, which calculates the charge associated with the particular CDRs. Rating engine performs various tasks as per varied customer requirements for different services.

Mediation systems for Telecom domain support various other domains. The list as follows:

· Retail Billing

· Wholesale Billing - National and International

· Network Traffic Management

· Data Warehousing

· Reconciliation system

· Fraud Management

· Provisioning Feed to Sub-systems

Call Detail Record - CDR

Telecom billing process comprises provisioning the services within the billing system. like importing the CDRs from various sources and then calculation of rates, billing and at last the invoice generation.
In brief Telecom billing is the process of gathering and grouping telecommunication service for specific accounts or customers, producing and sending invoices, and keeping records of payments made to customer accounts. CDR is the basic unit of Telecom billing process.

Call Detail Record - CDR
A Call Detail Record (also known as Call Data Record - CDR) is the computer record produced by a telephone exchange containing details of a call that passed through it.
It comprises detailed information about the calls originating from, terminating at or passing through the exchange.
The embedded information in a CDR or Station Message Detail Recording (SMDR) is as follows:

The duration of each call
The amount billed for each call
The total usage time in the billing period
The total free time remaining in the billing period
The total charges during the billing period
The number making the call (calling party)
The number receiving the call (called party)
When the call started (date and time)
How long the call was (duration)
The number charged for the call
The identifier of the telephone exchange writing the record
A sequence number identifying the record
Additional digits on the called number used to route or charge the call
The result of the call (whether it was answered, busy etc.)
The route by which the call entered the exchange
The route by which the call left the exchange
Call type (voice, SMS, etc)
Any fault condition encountered

The format of the CDR varies among telecom providers. A CDR for a particular account can be downloaded at the request of the subscriber who holds that account. If the telecom provider supplies users with itemized bills, a CDR will show up in each bill. The CDRs are generated by Automatic Message Accounting (AMA) and processed by the operations support system (OSS).
A CDR File may contain more than one type of call traffic. For example, fixed line voice traffic and fixed line data traffic may be placed in the same file, but will be identified separately for rating purposes.
A Call accounting software or communication management software is generally used to retrieve and process the CDR data

CDRs are produced by the charging system of the telephone exchanges. Generally, CDRs are created at the end of a call but on some phone systems the data is available during the call. This data is output from the phone system by a serial link known as the Station Message Detail Recording port (SMDR). Some of the details included in call records are: Time, Date, Call Duration, Number dialed, Caller ID information, Extension, Line/trunk location, Cost, Call completion status.
Call detail records, both local and long distance, can be used for usage verification, billing reconciliation, network management and to monitor telephone usage to determine volume of phone usage, as well as abuse of your company's telephone system. CDR's are an asset in managing long distance telephone costs and aid in the planning for future telecommunications needs. Besides for billing, CDRs can be used for supporting the operations of the telephone company by providing information about faulty calls and amount of traffic taken along particular routes.

The other benefits of CDR are as follows:

Control telecommunications costs with CDR analysis
Verify costs and usage
Resolve discrepancies with vendors
Disconnect unused service
Terminate leases on unused equipment
Deter or detect toll fraud of long distance services
Negotiate the most cost-effective call routing


Transport
Computer networks are used for transporting CDRs to a central point for processing, with X.25 links being widely used worldwide. The CDRs of calls still in progress are held by the sending exchange until the call is completed.

Call record (CDR) buffers
Call records are transmitted via serial port to a buffer, where they are temporarily stored until retrieved by call accounting software. It is a safe method transferring information to a call accounting or tele-management system.

SMDR (Station Messaging Detail Record)
While CDR and SMDR are similar, the most important difference is their users. CDRs are for telephone company use, and may carry information about the processing of a call. To create actual billable call records, it may be necessary to correlate several CDRs. CDRs may also have a role in internal financial transfers among phone companies

CDR Processing (alias Mediation)
When the CDRs have been collected they must be checked (validation), reformatted (normalization) and consolidated for further processing.
The combined process of collection, validation, normalization and consolidation is also referred as mediation. This can be a very complex process.
Rating and Billing
Once CDRs have been collected, validated, normalized and consolidated, a charge is calculated for each call identified by the details in one or more CDRs. This process is known as rating and carried out by a rating engine. The rating engine can be part of a billing system or it can be a preliminary process outside of the billing system. In any event, the billing system adds up the charges determined during rating for each account, calculate balances and generate invoices. The CDRs then finally end up on the invoice in form of an itemized bill