The Real Time Charging & Rating Engine platform allows the operator to keep records of service usage by subscribers. The platform includes a quota management subsystem (Quota Manager), which keeps track of services used by subscribers on meters covered by subscriptions (subscription fees). The platform also includes a balance management subsystem (Balance Manager) that keeps track of subscriber balances (monetary and non-monetary). The billing subsystem (Rating Engine) allows you to create different flexible billing mechanisms for used services, such as: fixed cost, cost depending on time of day/day of week, cost depending on volume of used services, etc.
The Charging & Rating Engine solution consists of the modules described below.
The Balance Manager system has the following features:
The Balance Manager system performs the following basic functions:
The Charging Application subsystem consists of the following modules:
It provides charging of subscribers' sessions according to the time of corresponding service usage. The cost of services to be applied to a subscriber's session is defined in the Rating Engine subsystem.
Provides subscriber session billing based on the amount of traffic used by a subscriber during a session. The cost of services, that should be applied to the subscriber's session, is determined in the Rating Engine.
Applying Charges based on usage/bandwidth consumed by the subscriber. Usage based Rate sheets are
Provides billing of events determining the usage of services, such as MMS, SMS, content downloads, Video-on-Demand services etc.
Quota Manager gives operators an opportunity to form package offers for their subscribers. Quota Manager supports working with packages (quotas) with different units of measurement (minutes of calls, traffic volume, number of messages, etc.). Quota Manager supports integration with AAA applications (AAA Server, Policy Server & HSS) and Charging Engine.
Pre-paid quotas expressed in units of time, for example:
Internet traffic packets, e.g: