Amdocs converges billing and policy
Shows off roadmap based on acquisition of Bridgewater, with products to help carriers create flexible data experiences
Published: 1 December, 2011
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Billing giant Amdocs is not spending too long assimilating its recent acquisition, policy systems specialist Bridgewater, and has already published its roadmap to integrate their product lines. As carriers look to converge their network and IT activities, Amdocs expects to be able to hit the "sweet spot" in the middle, allowing operators to relate billing to their increasingly complex data and charging policies.
To do this means breaking down the walls between network and IT operations, says the firm. The new integrated platform will be housed in a division which focuses on helping carriers to deliver a mobile user experience rather than just analyzing the packets for billing purposes. Telcos need to be "able to define plans quickly and intuitively", Ann Hatchell, director of data experience marketing for the new unit, told ConnectedPlanet. "The complexity must be kept behind the scenes. Customers want a tailored social network plan, for instance, not a plan based on gigabyte consumption."
The first offering supports a range of eight different mobile data plans, all with billing and policy functions pre-integrated upfront so they can be deployed rapidly. Amdocs says this will slash the cost and risk which have held many cellcos back from converging their charging and policy systems - a process which has been perceived as highly complicated and expensive. "We have done it for them, giving them one place to control policy and charging, providing simplicity and accuracy for customers and opportunities to cross-sell and upsell," said Hatchell.
The eight options include tiered pricing, shared wallet, intuitive top-up, one-off data passes, Wi-Fi offload, LTE, pay-as-you-go and 'bill shock prevention'. Some, like the last one, will merely help operators deliver better customer service, while others are designed to help them increase their revenues, perhaps by giving a heavy user a temporary upgrade in a busy month (rather than throttling data speeds) which may encourage a permanent move to a more expensive plan.
The shared wallet supports greater flexibility in offering family plans and potentially 'data buckets' for single users, which can be shared among multiple gadgets - generally agreed to be something most cellcos will have to adopt as users acquire more and more wireless products. Operators are also looking at the way users are viewing TV on tablets and want to be able to address everyone in the living room, says Amdocs.
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