Billing Options

BILLING OPTIONS

Flexible Billing Options

MassTel consolidates multiple vendor invoices by product into a single bill at the corporate level or bills separated by individual location, department, or general ledger/cost center coded allowing easy integration into customer payment systems.

Billing

MassTel has incorporated a unique tiered reporting structure that adds flexibility in organizing and presenting invoices based on individual customer needs. The billing hierarchy contains the following levels:

  • Corporate level

  • Individual location levels

MassTel provides call detail and usage charge itemization by location under either option. The bill is available in detail or summary format depending on whether the Parent or Child locations are responsible for the payment. All billing is performed in-house, enabling you to increase productivity and focus on other business matters.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Customers with EDI software can take advantage of the 811 Consolidated Service Invoice Statement transaction set. MassTel offers the 811 Consolidated Summary Transaction Set and Extended 811 Transaction set Guidelines.

Our current methods of transport are email and file transfer protocol (FTP). If a customer wishes to use a Value Added Network (VAN) for file transfer, they must incur the VAN transport costs.

Prepaid Billing Option

Most customers now prefer prepaid services. The accumulation of new gadgets and technologies in the market has made telecom companies ignore the current trends affecting the mobile market. There may be many such trends; however, prepaid telecom billing is one of the most significant trends. A cost-conscious customer who does not want to depend on the service provider would always look for prepaid services. Since the service option allows a customer to make use of the best offers that are available in the market, the demand for this service continues to increase. This is the reason telecom companies now give priority to prepaid billing services. A prepaid service operator understands that a customer using prepaid services can easily switch from one provider to another. Therefore, the retention of a customer completely depends on technology.

Prepaid communication services is a process that is used by service providers (such as communication providers) to be paid for services they provide in the future. This allows the provider to obtain revenue for services without the risk of bad debt and it eliminates the need and cost for billing operations. Prepaid service is often associated with customers that may be credit challenged or who want more control over bills. In the prepaid process, there is no Dun & Bradstreet risk review or credit reporting agency review.

Most of the operators provide two options to their customers, to go for a postpaid or a prepaid connection. A Postpaid as well as prepaid connections have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Usually, an operator will have 70%-80% customer base comprising of pre-paid customers and rest of the customer base will come from post-paid side. For an operator, it is always good to have more post-paid customers.

You might be willing to know about the differences between the two types of customers, services and systems. Let us list down a few major differences between the two −

  • Service Payments − This is the most important factor, which differentiates between two customer bases. Pre-paid customers make payment in advance before using the service, whereas post-paid customers use offered services throughout of the month, and at the end of the month, customer receives the bill to pay within the given time frame.

  • Charging & Billing − For pre-paid customer, it is required to charge the customer in real time for all the usage whereas post-paid customers can be charged at the end of the month.

  • Service Offerings − Post-paid billing systems provide more flexibilities in comparison of real time charging systems. For example, real time charging system is not flexible to maintain a complex business customers' hierarchy, where as a post-paid billing system can handle a customer hierarchy up to N level.

  • Support & Maintenance − An operator needs to give same attention to both the businesses. If, for a pre-paid business, operator needs to have skilled manpower to control the operation, same time operator needs a great staff to handle post-paid customer's queries related to their charging, bills, and fixing operational issues.

  • Supported Network − A long time ago, the network of the prepaid and the postpaid connections were different. This used to invoke complaints that the prepaid connection would offer better connectivity than the postpaid or vice versa. This is the age of convergent billing and operators are running their business with the same network without compromising communication quality.

Postpaid Scenario

Network elements (like switches, SMSC) produce raw usage called Usage Detail Records (UDRs) or Call Detail Records (CDRs), which contain information required by the billing system −

  • Calling number (A number)

  • Called number (the number receiving the call) (B number)

  • when the call started (date and time)

  • Call duration

  • Call Type (MOC, MTC, etc., MOC stands for Mobile Originated Call and MTC stands for Mobile Terminated Call)

The above raw UDRs from network elements and also from other service providers are received by the billing system and the billing system converts these into a format understandable by the system. The above formatted/converted UDR is then guided to find the customer/account to which the call should be charged and then rate the event accordingly.

The above rated UDRs are then stored in the billing data store, and on the billing cycle date, the billing process picks up these rated UDRs and processes these and renders bill/invoice, taking into account, the payments, taxes, discounts, etc.

The customer then pays the bill and the billing system is updated with the payment details

Prepaid Scenario

Steps involved in prepaid billing in brief are as follows −

  • When customer makes a call, prepaid switching gateway captures the calling number and sends the account information to the real time billing system.

  • Real time billing systems using the above information, authenticates the identity of the user, calculates the customer account's remaining balance using the rating tariff table and maximum allowable duration of the call, and sends this information to the prepaid gateway.

  • The gateway establishes the call.

  • During the call, gateway monitors the call so that the user do not exceed the maximum allowable call duration.

  • When the call is over, the gateway sends the actual call duration to the prepaid billing system, which then calculates the actual call cost and updates the account balance, decreasing the remaining balance.

Prepaid billing process involves the following important steps along with account information gathering and updating account after the call is completed −

  • Authenticating − Authentication is the process of verifying that a user is who he or she claims to be. The user supplies a user ID and an authentication credential, such as a password. The system accepts these as inputs and verifies that the user is valid and has access to the system.

  • Authorizing − Authorization is the process of verifying what an authenticated user is allowed to do. Generally, Remote Access Dial In User Server (RADIUS) protocol is used to limit access to the system to registered and authorized customers.

  • Providing advice of charge (AOC) − This gives information about the actual cost of the call either prior to or after the event. AOC provides the ability of a telecommunications system to advice of the actual costs of the event either prior to or after the occurrence of the event.


Please contact us for additional billing information.