Rating and Charging operations are rapidly evolving for Telco operators as they transition to Techcos. For example, 5G networks use the 3GPP Nchf charging interface, which is a REST API-based charging interface. As a result, Telcos are forced to re-examine their Rating and Charging infrastructure, which is often legacy and classified as Systems of Record with high degrees of change control and associated low levels of agility.
The traditional separation of management of prepaid and post-paid customer Rating and Charging operations will also be increasingly challenged and may lead to poor customer experience and lack of agility to embrace new 5G and digital business models.
With fragmented, monolithic BSS/OSS architectures and the added pressure to transform to Techcos, there is an evident need for increased agility from business conceptualisation to operational readiness, and legacy technology stacks do not support this need.
One of the essential four processes and functions impacting the launch of new products is Rating and Charging operations.
Diameter Online Charging System (OCS)
Hot billing event stream processing, e.g. from Kafka usage event brokers
Offline Charging mediation usage record sources
3GPP TS32.291 5G Network Charging RESTful Web Service API consumers
TMF635 Usage consumers as part of Digital Business Model core commerce and production systems