"One ‘Tier 1’ VoIP Billing Solution at the price of a ‘Tier 3’, please!"
Cable service providers would agree to the fact that in order to stay ahead of competition, acquiring service-based differentiation is the key. For this, they need to bring new value-added services to the market — VoIP in particular.
This is exactly what most cable operators are doing, but they seldom seem to realize the complexities involved in pricing and billing this Value Added Service (VAS).
Some of them have been quick to realize that this move, rather than adding to their revenues, has resulted in losses. The shift to acquire service-based differentiation by offering VoIP services to customers was no doubt the right thing to do — what backfired was the decision to follow the traditional pricing model of flat-rate billing for a new–generation service.
While the VoIP wholesaler offers services to the cable service provider with a ‘threshold pricing’ plan, the service provider is unable to offer the same to his customers, thanks to the limitations in his existing pricing and billing systems that are too rigid to support flexible pricing and discounting strategies tailored to the usage patterns of each category of customers.
The need of the hour is a sophisticated, rule-based pricing and billing solution that can take care of mediation, rating, billing, revenue settlements and reconciliation for the VAS offered by cable service providers.
Most Tier 1 and some of the Tier 2 operators have already embraced this solution, and are reaping rich dividends. A good number of Tier 2 and Tier 3 players do understand and appreciate the value of a rule-based pricing and billing solution, but are faced with the challenge of the huge investment involved. They need a pricing and billing solution that offers a cost-effective way to keep staffing and technology investments to the bone, while ensuring that their cash register keeps ringing — a solution that would accelerate their billing implementation and allow them to pay as they use. What they need is a substitute to purchasing licenses and owning billing systems.
Cable service providers need a pricing and billing system that is as versatile as a Tier 1 player’s, and at the same time, incurs much lower investment. In other words, they are looking for a secure, state-of-the-art VAS pricing and billing service bureau or ASP (Application Service Provider) that delivers usage-based pricing and billing for their customers.