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Top
billing: Cable operators have yet to come to terms with the
back-office needs of delivering ever-more sophisticated set
of services.
©
Cable & Satellite Europe – August 6, 2007 – Farah Jifri
As
a result, the process of subscriber management, network and
service provisioning and activation, and the integration of
third party applications and content providers, is all becoming
ever more complex. This has made the back office a core element
of the network.
As
Highdeal vice-president, product strategies, Fergus O' Reilly,
points out, it's crucial that a billing system gives providers
the flexibility to create new price plans in a short time-frame,
cope with any type of payment method and be easily integrated
with any type of infrastructure. However, the silo-based approach
taken by most operators, with separate OSS/BSS systems in
place for each application that bas been added on, means the
addition of further applications, can lead to a seriously
entangled back-office.
"Most
operators and service providers are marketing their IP-based
services as all-you-can-eat flat-rate service plan. For €30-60
a month, a consumer can get unlimited internet, television
and calling to certain countries, but the flat-rate service
plan is for the most part a myth. There are always [extra]
charges, for instance for calls to mobile phones or to watch
certain movies. And as the range of service options continues
to proliferate, the flat-rate plan will work less and less.
More services inevitably leads to more complex segmentation
of the market and more complex pricing and rating," O'
Reilly adds.
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