ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)

User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Requirements for Check-up on Metering and Billing Processes

RTS/USER-0050

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 14-Oct-2018
• Technical Committee: USER - User Group
• Current Stage: 12 - Completion
• Due Date: 26-Oct-2018
• Completion Date: 15-Oct-2018

Standards Content (Sample)

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
User Group;
Quality of ICT Services;
Requirements for Check-up on Metering and
Billing Processes
2 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)

Reference
RTS/USER-0050
Keywords
charging, quality, user
ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE

Tel.: [phone]  Fax: [phone]

Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - NAF 742 C
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° 7803/88

Important notice
The present document can be downloaded from:
http://www.etsi.org/standards-search
The present document may be made available in electronic versions and/or in print. The content of any electronic and/or
print versions of the present document shall not be modified without the prior written authorization of ETSI. In case of any
existing or perceived difference in contents between such versions and/or in print, the only prevailing document is the
print of the Portable Document Format (PDF) version kept on a specific network drive within ETSI Secretariat.
Users of the present document should be aware that the document may be subject to revision or change of status.
Information on the current status of this and other ETSI documents is available at
https://portal.etsi.org/TB/ETSIDeliverableStatus.aspx
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comment to one of the following services:
https://portal.etsi.org/People/CommiteeSupportStaff.aspx
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and microfilm except as authorized by written permission of ETSI.
The content of the PDF version shall not be modified without the written authorization of ETSI.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.

© ETSI 2018.
All rights reserved.
TM TM TM
DECT , PLUGTESTS , UMTS and the ETSI logo are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members.
TM TM
3GPP and LTE are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and
of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
oneM2M logo is protected for the benefit of its Members. ®
GSM and the GSM logo are trademarks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
ETSI
3 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 5
Foreword . 5
Modal verbs terminology . 5
Introduction . 5
1 Scope . 7
2 References . 7
2.1 Normative references . 7
2.2 Informative references . 8
3 Definitions of terms and abbreviations. 8
3.1 Terms . 8
3.2 Abbreviations . 10
4 Billing Chain and Risks . 11
4.1 Billing Chain . 11
4.2 Billing Model in Operational Area . 12
4.2.1 Billing model . 12
4.2.2 Configuration of Charging data and Billing Platforms . 13
4.3 Inherent risks in tariff plans complexity . 14
4.3.0 Inherent risks . 14
4.3.1 Bundles and bundle plans management . 14
4.3.2 Value-Added Services . 15
4.3.2.1 VAS billing risks . 15
4.3.2.2 Billing of Premium Rate and Content Services . 15
4.3.3 Temporary mobile offer and real time promotion . 15
4.3.4 Zero-rating . 16
4.3.5 Mobile Money . 16
5 Approach for Checking-up on Metering and Billing . 17
5.1 Billing Integrity Principles . 17
5.2 Process Approach . 17
5.3 Billing Error Rate . 17
6 Implementation Model . 17
7 Prerequisites . 18
7.0 General prerequisites . 18
7.1 Metering Rules Definition . 18
7.1.1 Definition of Successful and Unsuccessful Status . 18
7.1.2 Definition of Units . 19
7.1.3 Definition of Time . 19
7.1.4 Definition of Duration . 19
7.1.5 Definition of Data Volume . 19
7.1.6 Definition of Classes of Service . 19
7.1.7 Definition of Rounding Methods . 19
7.2 Tariff Information Documentation . 20
7.2.1 Tariff Scope . 20
7.2.2 Taxes Information . 21
7.2.3 Definition of Rounding Methods . 21
7.2.4 Definition of Publishing Modes . 21
8 Checking-up Process . 21
8.0 General principles. 21
8.1 Process Overview . 22
8.2 Test Campaign Design . 22
8.3 Test Resources Procurement . 23
8.4 Electronic Communications Technical Configuration . 24
ETSI
4 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
8.5 Electronic Communications Generation . 24
8.6 TCG Logs Collection . 24
8.7 Billing Details Collection . 24
8.8 Electronic Communications Rating and Matching . 25
8.9 Balance and Invoices checking . 25
8.10 Reporting . 25
8.11 Billing Error Rate Computation . 26
9 Test Methodology . 26
9.1 End-to-End Active Test . 26
9.1.0 End-to-end active test methodology . 26
9.1.1 Test Charging Generator . 26
9.1.2 User devices connected to TCG . 27
9.2 Test interfaces . 27
9.2.0 TCG interfaces . 27
9.2.1 Air interfaces . 27
9.2.2 Core interfaces . 27
9.3 Benefits of end-to-end test. 27
Annex A (informative): Example of a Stratified Sample of Electronic Communications . 29
A.1 General information . 29
A.2 Locations . 30
A.3 Networks . 30
A.4 Offers . 30
A.5 Services . 31
A.6 Durations . 31
A.7 Volumes . 32
A.8 Spreading . 32
A.9 Additional Variations . 32
Annex B (informative): Case Management & Corrective Actions Enforcement . 33
History . 34

ETSI
5 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Intellectual Property Rights
Essential patents
IPRs essential or potentially essential to normative deliverables may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (https://ipr.etsi.org/).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Trademarks
The present document may include trademarks and/or tradenames which are asserted and/or registered by their owners.
ETSI claims no ownership of these except for any which are indicated as being the property of ETSI, and conveys no
right to use or reproduce any trademark and/or tradename. Mention of those trademarks in the present document does
not constitute an endorsement by ETSI of products, services or organizations associated with those trademarks.
Foreword
This Technical Specification (TS) has been produced by ETSI User Group (USER).
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) standardization is part of the general standardization activities, and
contributes to policy objectives to improve the competitiveness of European industry, as specified in the Lisbon
strategy. The legal basis for European standardization and standardization policy, including the ICT domain, is
Directive 98/34/EC [i.8]. One of its main elements is the formal recognition of three European Standards Organisations
(ESOs), CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, active in various degrees in the ICT domain. Standards produced by the three
ESOs and resulting from an open consensus building process are by nature voluntary and non-binding technical
documents.
The standardization work described in the present document was funded by the European Commission, Enterprise and
Industry Directorate-General, as part of the 2009 ICT Standardization Work Programme and executed by ETSI.
The present document has been produced within the ETSI Special Committee USER GROUP (USER) by the Specialist
Task Force (STF) 375. Several documents provided by European Telecommunications regulatory bodies have been
used to develop the present document. They are detailed in ETSI TR 102 847 [i.7].
Modal verbs terminology
In the present document "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "may", "need not", "will", "will not", "can" and
"cannot" are to be interpreted as described in clause 3.2 of the ETSI Drafting Rules (Verbal forms for the expression of
provisions).
"must" and "must not" are NOT allowed in ETSI deliverables except when used in direct citation.
Introduction
The original motivation to produce present document was that a significant difference rate between theoretical and
actual bills had been identified by several parties in the current metering and billing processes operated by Service
Providers (operators). Several Service Providers, administrations and users associations have intended to reduce this
difference rate in implementing rules in order to make users more confident in the reliability of their bills.
ETSI
6 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
The telecommunications industry remains a fast-moving and complex ecosystem. The Service Providers are facing a
number of new challenges:
• Smart phone as fast-growing User platform to access applications and all digital services over mobile internet.
• Rapidly evolving new technologies, combining 5G and optical fibres, for migrating ultra-high speed networks.
• An underlying shift taking place: telecom providers are investing in media and content services, while media
and content service providers are investing in communications.
• Over-the-top (OTT) services becomes increasingly popular with Users, who demand higher-quality data
services and essentially increased traffic requirements on Service Providers.
The convergence of telecom services with media and technologies makes revenue assurance for Service Providers as a
necessary strategy with many potential opportunities for the substantial amounts of data flowing through their networks
by data propositions, pricing and charging mechanisms, in addition to the existing voice and SMS revenues. On the
other hand, those challenges increase the risks of billing errors and cause overcharging or undercharging for the Service
providers. From the User or Regulator view, overcharging and transparency in a bill are of paramount importance.
Nevertheless, due to the complexity of this issue and in absence of any available formal standard in this area, the current
practices are hindered by significant limitations. The purpose of the present document is to fulfil the gaps of the current
practices, in order to provide a reference that can be used for a continuous and trustworthy checking up on metering and
billing processes. Such a checking is expected to contribute to a continuous quality of service improvement on metering
and billing processes.
In order to provide evidence that metering and billing verification is conducted according to the present document, it
will be useful for a Service Provider to have its verification process audited by an independent party, that will formally
assess the conformity of its checking-up on metering and billing with the technical specification. Therefore, the present
document is inevitable not only for protecting User, for assuring revenues of Service Provider, but also for Regulatory
Authority in monitoring accuracy of all charges of consumers when using the regulated services.
The purpose of ETSI TS 102 846 [1] is to define when, how and by whom the conformity assessment audit is
conducted. Such a conformity assessment is expected to contribute to an increased trust by Service Providers,
customers, regulators and other stakeholders that metering and billing processes are reasonably monitored.
ETSI
7 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
1 Scope
The present document has been prepared to provide a model for designing and operating the checking-up on metering
and billing processes of Service Providers.
Because the checking-up approach of the present document is end-to-end (i.e. using a "black box" approach from the
actual electronic communications generation to the checking-up on their billing), it is intended that these requirements
are applicable to the metering and billing of any kind of services offered by the Service Providers.
The goal of the present document is to define a standardized checking process and the test methodology that could be
implemented by any stakeholder and is auditable by a third-party, leading to trustworthy performance indicators about
the integrity of billing issued by a Service Provider.
NOTE: It is important to note that the present document does not provide any model for designing and operating
the metering and billing process itself.
2 References
2.1 Normative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
https://docbox.etsi.org/Reference/.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are necessary for the application of the present document.
[1] ETSI TS 102 846: "User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Requirements for Bodies Providing
Conformity Assessment of Checking-up on Metering and Billing Processes".
[2] BIPM: "The International System of Units (SI)".
[3] ETSI TS 122 115: "Technical Specification Digital cellular telecommunications system
(Phase 2+); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; Telecommunication
management; Service aspects; Charging and billing (3GPP TS 22.115)".
[4] ETSI TS 132 240: "Technical Specification Digital cellular telecommunications system
(Phase 2+); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; Telecommunication
management; Charging management; Charging architecture and principles (3GPP TS 32.240)".
[5] ETSI TS 132 260: "Technical Specification Digital cellular telecommunications system
(Phase 2+); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; Telecommunication
management; Charging management; IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) charging
(3GPP TS 32.260)".
[6] ETSI TS 132 295: "Technical Specification Digital cellular telecommunications system
(Phase 2+); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; Telecommunication
management; Charging management; Charging Data Record (CDR) transfer (3GPP TS 32.295)".
[7] ETSI TS 132 297: "Technical Specification Digital cellular telecommunications system
(Phase 2+); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; Telecommunication
management; Charging management; Charging Data Record (CDR) file format and transfer
(3GPP TS 32.297)".
[8] IEEE 802.11™-2012: "Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY)
specifications".
ETSI
8 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
2.2 Informative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are not necessary for the application of the present document but they assist the
user with regard to a particular subject area.
[i.1] ETSI EG 202 057-2: "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); User related
QoS parameter definitions and measurements; Part 2: Voice telephony, Group 3 fax, modem data
services and SMS".
[i.2] ETSI EG 202 057-3: "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); User related
QoS parameter definitions and measurements; Part 3: QoS parameters specific to Public Land
Mobile Networks (PLMN)".
[i.3] ETSI EG 202 057-4: "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); User related
QoS parameter definitions and measurements; Part 4: Internet access".
[i.4] ETSI EG 202 765-2: "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); QoS and
network performance metrics and measurement methods Part 2: Transmission Quality Indicator
combining Voice Quality Metrics".
[i.5] ETSI ES 202 765-4: "Speech and multimedia Transmission Quality (STQ); QoS and network
performance metrics and measurement methods; Part 4: Indicators for supervision of Multiplay
services".
[i.7] ETSI TR 102 847: "User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Standardization and regulation
references in the Metering and Billing area".
[i.8] Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 1998 laying down a
procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations.
[i.8] ETSI ETR 037: "Network Aspects (NA); Telecommunications Management Network (TMN);
Objectives, principles, concepts and reference configurations".
3 Definitions of terms and abbreviations
3.1 Terms
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms apply:
billing error rate: for a set of electronic communications, the ratio of the total number of electronic communications
having breached at least one of the billing integrity principles divided by the total number of electronic communications
in the set
billing integrity principles: principles that should be fulfilled to state that the billing activity of a Service Provider is
correct
Billing Verification Body (BVB): organization that has skills and methods to conduct the checking-up on metering and
billing processes of a Service Provider
NOTE: The Billing Verification Body can be internal (i.e. a department of the Service Provider) or external (i.e. a
specialized company to which the Service Provider has outsourced the check-up on metering and billing).
ETSI
9 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Charging Data Record (CDR): Record generated by a Core Network Element for the purpose of billing a subscriber
for the provided service. It includes fields identifying the user, the session and the Network Elements as well as
information on the network resources and services used to support a subscriber session.
NOTE 1: In the traditional circuit domain, CDR has been used to denote "Call Detail Record", which is subsumed
by "Charging Data Record" hereafter [5].
NOTE 2: For each party to be charged for parts of or all charges of a chargeable event a separate CDR is generated,
i.e. more than one CDR may be generated for a single chargeable event, e.g. because of its long duration,
or because more than one charged party is to be charged.
checking-up on metering and billing: activities used to verify how strongly a Service Provider metering and billing
activities complies with billing integrity principles
continuous: characteristics of an approach that takes into consideration the constantly evolving nature of
communications networks and follows a "back-to-back" principle to verify metering and billing
NOTE: Because metering and billing processes and systems evolve on a continuous basis (incidence and update),
the verification of billing has to evolve accordingly and to check the billing integrity on a similar way.
"Continuous basis" excludes "one shot audit approach" where verification is performed once a year or
once per quarter.
customer: user who is responsible for payment for the electronic communication services
electronic communication: service that helps people communicate
NOTE: Electronic communication types include but are not limited to voice call, video call, conference call,
email, SMS, MMS, USSD, web access, instant messaging, content download, TV broadcasting, etc.
Electronic communications may involve one or several interconnected networks. An electronic
communication may lead to billing of a financial charge to a Customer of the Service Provider.
independent observer: entity which can evidence two characteristics: independency and externality
NOTE: In the context of the present document, the independency clause means that the entity in charge of
checking has some level of independence from the entity in charge of operating metering and billing
within the Service Provider. The externality means that the checking entity does not have to understand
all the complexity of the information systems and network components involved in the metering and
billing of a Service Provider.
metering and billing: activity, within a Service Provider, which aims at charging a customer either by producing an
invoice or by decreasing a prepaid account
NOTE: Metering and billing usually involve four main types of activity:
 metering is the computation of raw parameters (time, duration, volume, etc.) of electronic
communications;
 guiding is the allocation of a specific event to a specific customer;
 rating is the computation of a price of an event according to a rate plan; and
 charging is the imputation of the financial charge to the customer.
metering rules: set of non-ambiguous principles set by a Service Provider to define and meter the electronic
communications service it offers to its customers
prerequisites: list of basic principles and statements with regards to metering principles and tariff information that
should be available prior to the implementation of checking-up on metering and billing processes
publishing mode: mean by which billing information is provided to the customer of the Service Provider
NOTE: Publishing mode may include but are not limited to paper invoice, electronic invoices, web sites, Call
Centres, Intelligent Voice Response Units, SMS servers, USSD servers, etc.
Service Provider (SP): organization that provides electronic communications services to users and customers
ETSI
10 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Stratified Sample of Electronic Communications (SSEC): sample of electronic communications used to conduct the
billing and metering checking process
NOTE: The sample of electronic communications is designed according to statistical method so as to provide a
reasonable evidence that the billing integrity is fulfilled.
tariff information: set of principles defined by a Service Provider to price the electronic communications it offers to its
customers
NOTE: Tariff information includes the definition of unit price (price for a unit billed quantity) and valuation
methods (set of mathematic methods allowing transforming raw quantities into billed quantities).
tariff plan: set of principles defined by a Service Provider to price the electronic communications service it offers to
one customer
NOTE: Tariff plan is a subset of tariff information.
Test Charging Generator (TCG): Remotely operated and automated test system that is able to generate test events,
emulating the usage of application transactions, each type of services, including voice, messaging, value added services
(VAS) and data, etc. The test events, in turn, cause the core networks to generate and collect the corresponding
appropriate charging information and transfer it to the billing systems.
NOTE 1: TCG used to denote Test Call Generator in the CS domain. More recently, the term of test Event
Generation System (EGS) is also used in the same context of TCG. In the present document, TCG
subsumes the term of automated (test) robot in the earlier versions.
NOTE 2: Its main functions comprise:
 electronic communication test planning;
 electronic communication test events generation and execution;
 electronic communication logging as test result.
unambiguous: characteristic of a rule that can be understood and checked by a customer by its own means without
having to understand the internality of a Service Provider systems and processes
user: individual, including consumer, or organization using or requesting telecommunications services available on
public or private networks
NOTE: The user may or may not be the person who has subscribed to the provision of the service. Without any
specific addition this word is used to identify the telecommunication user community in general,
e.g. end-users and IT&T managers who use products and services possibly conforming to standards.
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
5G Fifth Generation mobile technology
ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
API Application Programming Interface
APN Access Point Name
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures/Bureau International des Poids et Mesures
BVB Billing Verification Body
CDR Charging Data Record
CSCF Call Session Control Function
DSL Digital Subscriber Line
EGS Event Generation System
FDD Frequency Division Duplex
GPRS General Packet Radio Service (2G mobile technology together with GSM)
GSM Global System for Mobile communications
GW GateWay
ETSI
11 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
ICT Information and Communications Technology
IN Intelligent Network
IP Internet Protocol
ISUP ISDN User Part
LTE Long Term Evolution (4G mobile technology)
MMS Multimedia Message Service
MNO Mobile Network Operator
MSC Mobile Switching Centre
NR New Radio access
OCS Online Charging System
OTT Over-The-Top
RCS Rich Communication Services
SCEF Service Capabilities Exposure Function
SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node
SIM Subscriber Identification Module
SIP Session Initiation Protocol
SMS Short Message Service
SP Service Provider
SSEC Stratified Sample of Electronic Communications
TCG Test Charging Generator
TDD Time Division Duplex
TV Television
UE User Equipment
UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (3G mobile technology)
URL Universal Resource Locator
USSD Unstructured Supplementary Service Data
VAS Value-Added Service
VOD Video On Demand
VoIP Voice over IP
VPLMN Visited Public Land Mobile Network
VPN Virtual Private Network
4 Billing Chain and Risks
4.1 Billing Chain
A telecommunication billing chain consists of three functional areas:
• information management area,
• operational area,
• financial management area.
The information management area is responsible for customer information, pricing model and numerous billing
configurations, management of the contract entries and the corresponding service provisions and withdrawals, customer
cares.
The operational area captures, collects and records the overall usage of services, resources (creating raw CDR, ETSI
TS 122 115 [3], ETSI TS 132 240 [4] and ETSI TS 132 260 [5]), processes, converts and transfers CDR, from raw
CDR, mediated CDR, rated CDR to billed CDR, ETSI TS 132 295 [6] and ETSI TS 132 297 [7]. The area comprises
online charging and offline charging and billing.
The financial management area covers financial functions such as invoice (bill) production, revenue recognition,
accounts receivable and payment tracking, as well as processing, mapping correspondence between payments and
consumed services, managing credits and debt collections, calculating company taxes, etc.
ETSI
12 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
4.2 Billing Model in Operational Area
4.2.1 Billing model
The metering and billing verification are mainly performed in the billing operational area. A simplified functional
billing model is depictured in figure 1.

Figure 1: Illustration of a billing model
The model consists of four functional components: Offline and Online charging function, mediation, rating and billing
domain system, where the charging function is located in the core network and distributed in the different domains,
services and subsystems. The mediation, rating and billing domain system are a part of the operator network known as
billing system, and is separated from the core network for the purpose of the revenue assurance.
NOTE 1: Online charging function has also rating capability and can have an open interface to the billing domain.
Charging is a function within the telecommunications core network and comprises Offline and Online Charging
components. The charging information related to chargeable events is collected from the different Network Elements of
the core network (MSC, SGSN, MME/S-GW, P-GW, CSCF, SCEF, etc.). The information is formatted, transferred and
evaluated, to make it possible to determine usage for which the charged party (User) may be billed (offline charging) or
the subscriber's account balance may be debited (online charging) - ETSI TS 122 115 [3] and ETSI TS 132 240 [4]. In
short, the charging function collects charging information and generates raw CDR.
Offline charging is a mechanism where charging information does not affect, in real-time, the service rendered.
Online charging is a mechanism where charging information can affect, in real-time, the service rendered and therefore
a direct interaction of the charging mechanism with session/service control is required. Online Charging System (OCS)
performs real-time Credit-Control. Its functionality includes transaction handling, rating, online correlation and
management of subscriber accounts/balances.
Metering means a functionality for both the offline and online charging. The charging-responsible Network Elements
have mandatorily a distributed functionality, called Accounting Metrics Collection, to precisely capture the chargeable
events and the usage of the consumed resources from the service events or signalling/user traffic.
ETSI
13 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Mediation is a process within the Telecommunications Management Network which acts on information passing
between Network Elements and Operating Systems and provides local management functionality to the Network
Elements. Mediation uses standard interfaces and can be realized in a separate Mediation Device or be shared
among Network Elements and/or Operating Systems [i.8]. In context of the billing chain, mediation collects and
processes charging data (raw CDR) received from the charging functions of the core network and performs the
following tasks:
• Collecting and validating raw CDR from core network elements.
• Filtration of non-billing CDR.
• Correlation of different input sources CDR.
• Aggregation of partial CDRs related to the same call, session, event, service.
• CDR normalization transform the raw CDR to the mediated CDR and pass to the rating platform.
Rating function performs both monetary and non-monetary unit determination (rating). It provides the following
functionalities:
• Rating for network and external services and applications (session, service, event) before and after service
delivery.
• Cross-product and cross-channel discounts, benefits and allowances.
The Rating Function handles a wide variety of rateable instances, such as:
• Rating of volume (in terms of granted units or money, e.g. based on charging initiated by an access network
entity).
• Rating of time (in terms of granted units or money, e.g. based on charging initiated by a SIP application).
• Rating of events (e.g. based on charging of web content or MMS).
The Rating Function includes the determination and application of the tariff model or the price of a chargeable event or
of multiple chargeable events (correlation scenario); examples include the price of a call minute, data volume,
multimedia session, Web content, etc. The rating function converts the mediated CDR to the rated CDR.
Interactive rate function (online charging):
Upon receipt of a rate request (price or tariff request) from the Charging Function, the Rating Function:
• Evaluates the request. Rate requests include various rating parameters such as service identifier, subscriber
reference, network identification, user location, service usage time, transferred data volume, etc.
NOTE 2: A rate request may contain multiple service identifiers that reflect the list of active services contained in
the context handled by the Charging Function.
• Determines the applicable price or tariff model and returns it to the Charging Function.
Billing Domain (BD) receives and processes CDR files from the rating functions. The rated CDR are transformed as
billed CDR in form of bills requiring payment. Except billing, the billing domain includes also the other (e.g. statistical)
end applications. BD is only applicable to offline charging.
NOTE 3: Online Charging System can also generate rated CDRs and transfer them to the billing domain system.
4.2.2 Configuration of Charging data and Billing Platforms
It is evident that any errors in the billing chain will cause overcharging or undercharging. Although there are many root
causes, the main cause is resulted from a wrong configuration of charging data in the charging and the billing systems.
ETSI
14 ETSI TS 102 845 V2.0.0 (2018-10)
Charging data is generated and collected either from charging events or charging sessions in accordance with the Core
Network domains, services or subsystems. The charging data are essentially constructed from the content of charging
events and the parameters of the raw CDR. Many parameters in CDR are operator provisioned and configured to be
present in a CDR when the specified conditions are met. In another word, the presence of those parameters is
rule-based. If the business model is changed, the corresponding rules are required to be correctly modified and
configured to ensure to generate correct CDR.
Similarly, the rating platforms are deployed for monetisation of CDR. How to apply the rates for monetisation is strictly
followed the business model and tariff plans which derive the rules to configure the rating platform.
4.3 Inherent risks in tariff plans complexity
4.3.0 Inherent risks
Based on the rules derived from the business model and tariffs plans, the charging data, the mediation and rating
platforms in the billing system shall be correspondingly and correctly configured.
Because of the complexity and missing information inherent from the tariff plans, the wrong configuration of the
charging system and the various platforms in the billing system often causes the undercharging or overcharging. Several
examp
...