Rating is process to calculate subscriber’s usage charges (Voice/SMS/Other services) as per subscriber’s rate plan and finally loaded into DB for further prospects. The rated CDR further sent to credit monitoring. When the credit amount on the customer’s balance has reached a certain limit, some predefined actions such as granting a discount or sending SMS alert to customer carried out. Rated CDR also further used to analysis of fraud in terms of high usage.
Rating of calls made on below parameters.
A: Time of call (off peak/on peak)
B: Usages volume (call duration/amount of data usage/ number of SMS sent/).
C: Destination (National/ International/Roaming)
D: Premium charges (third party charges).
There are various billing solution vendors available and they have their own rating chain for rating customer’s usage.
Generally we have two data bases :1-> Customer Data base: This stores the information about customer name/address,customer code, rate plan information, services activated ( primary /secondary) ,customer status ( Active/suspended/deactivated) ,IMSI and SIM information etc.
2: A CDR Database : This stores customers call records .like information about Calling party, called party ,IMEI,IMSI,Callduration, callstart time,call end time, swtich/trunk group used, Call type( MOC,MTC,Roaming,Transit…etc..).
The rating chain fetches customer’s information and rate plan applied on it from Customer DB and rate their usage in respect to usage made reflecting on CDR DB.
Rate Plan configuration Basic:
configuring rate plans includes configuration of rates, services , time zone etc. various billing operator provide different rating package configuration structure. In general we have to gone through below mentioned steps to setup rate plans:
hi ,really appreciable work.. we are using bscs for billing.if u hv an idea then could u pls let me know the various parameters to smooth rating cycle run.thx in adv.
in BSCS for rating cycle you have to check RIH(rate input handler) process for rating. before RIH there is process call PRIH , check the same at server level and DB level to ensure that records in corresponding table updated timely.also check for disk space(error you will get :out of memory).swap space(like some time you got error like fork:cant initialize process).
Can tell me where this CDR database is maintained as customer database is maintained in HSS(some subscriber server) ..
CDR database also maintained by operator at their server.we get CDR’s from network elements like MSC,IN and after filtering CDR through mediation we kept in CDR DB.
Wonderful and very helpful knowledge,
Got from this sight. Thanks.
We and our few friends are intending to make a group under one service provider company.
Still require some help.
what are the rating engines we used generally?
Can you tell me difference between rating, charging and billing ?