ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)

User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Standardization and regulation references in the Metering and Billing area

DTR/USER-00030

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 06-Jun-2010
• Technical Committee: USER - User Group
• Current Stage: 12 - Completion
• Due Date: 22-Jun-2010
• Completion Date: 07-Jun-2010

Standards Content (Sample)

ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
Technical Report


User Group;
Quality of ICT Services;
Standardization and regulation references
in the Metering and Billing area

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2 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)



Reference
DTR/USER-00030
Keywords
charging, quality
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3 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 5
2 References . 5
2.1 Normative references . 5
2.2 Informative references . 5
3 Definitions and abbreviations . 6
3.1 Definitions . 6
3.2 Abbreviations . 6
4 Summary of the review of available regulatory requirements . 7
4.1 Criteria currently implemented in regulatory requirements . 7
4.1.1 Charging/Billing correctness. Billing Accuracy . 7
4.1.2 Billing complaints . 8
4.2 Some specific criteria . 9
4.3 Conformity/conformance/certification . 10
5 An overview of standardization within ETSI . 10
5.1 User related QoS . 10
5.2 User perceived QoS . 11
6 Overview of other organizations (including customers organisation). 11
6.1 TM Forum activities . 12
6.2 GRAPA - The Global Revenue Assurance Professional Association . 12
6.3 Consumers organisations . 13
7 Conclusion . 13
Annex A: Questionnaires sent to European Regulators and Operators by STF 375 . 14
A.1 Questionnaire sent to the regulators . 14
A.2 Questionnaire sent to the Operators . 15
Annex B: Bibliography . 16
B.1 Standards . 16
B.2 French documents . 17
History . 18

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4 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
Intellectual Property Rights
IPRs essential or potentially essential to the present document 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 (http://webapp.etsi.org/IPR/home.asp).
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.
Foreword
This Technical Report (TR) has been produced by ETSI User Group (USER).
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) standardisation is part of the general standardisation activities, and
contributes to policy objectives to improve the competitiveness of European industry, as specified in the Lisbon
strategy. The Directive 98/34/EC [i.15] is the legal basis for European standardisation and standardisation policy,
including the ICT domain. 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 Standardisation 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.
The present document is a companion of the TS 102 845 [i.1] and TS 102 846 [i.2] also produced by ETSI STF 375
USER GROUP (USER)
Introduction
Metering, charging and billing are very important for all the ICT stakeholders, such as Operators/Service providers,
Regulators, Customers and Standardisation Bodies, and different documents define related parameters, test methods,
and statistical results.
TS 102 845 [i.1] is dedicated to the requirements and definitions for a Method for checking Metering and Billing
systems.
TS 102 846 [i.2] defines requirements for Bodies Providing Conformity Assessment of Check-up on Metering and
Billing Processes.
The present document completes the contents of these two Technical Specifications in summarizing available materials
on metering and billing available in publications from some national regulators, standardization bodies and customers
associations.
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5 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
1 Scope
The present document provides information on the standards and regulatory documents available in the area of ICT
service metering and billing.
NOTE: The present document provides a non exhaustive review of documents related to Metering and Billing
developed by European regulators or by Standardization Bodies and Fora.
As TS 102 845 [i.1] defines requirements and methods for checking Metering and Billing systems, it was
agreed to avoid mixing requirements and information in the Technical Specification and therefore it was
chosen to collect the useful information on billing and charging in a stand-alone Technical Report.
2 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
reference document (including any amendments) applies.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
http://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.
2.1 Normative references
The following referenced documents are necessary for the application of the present document.
Not applicable.
2.2 Informative references
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 TS 102 845: "User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Requirements and Method for checking
Metering and Billing systems".
[i.2] ETSI TS 102 846: "User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Requirements for Bodies Providing
Conformity Assessment of Checking-up on Metering and Billing Processes".
[i.3] ETSI EG 202 057-1: "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); User related
QoS parameter definitions and measurements; Part 1: General".
[i.4] ETSI EG 201 769-1 "Speech Processing, Transmission and Quality Aspects (STQ); QoS
parameter definitions and measurements; Part 1: Parameters for voice telephony service required
under the ONP Voice Telephony Directive 98/10/EC".
[i.5] ETSI EG 202 009-1: "User Group; Quality of telecom services; Part 1: Methodology for
identification of parameters relevant to the Users".
[i.6] ETSI EG 202 843: "User Group; Quality of ICT Services; Definitions and Methods for Assessing
the QoS parameters of the Customer Relationship Stages other than utilization".
[i.7] TMF TR149; Technical Report: Part 1 - Holistic e2e Customer Experience Framework.
[i.8] TMF TR149; Technical Report: Part 2 - Key Factor Analysis Workbook.
[i.9] Finland - National regulation 31E/2009 (Unofficial English translation: On technical aspects of
charging in communication networks").
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6 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
[i.10] Germany - Administrative Order 168/1999: "Technical Requirements for Metering and Billing
Systems to Guarantee Accuracy in accordance with Section 5 of the Telecommunications
Customer Protection Ordinance (TKV)" Official Gazette 23/1999 of 22 December 1999.
[i.11] UK - Ofcom Metering & Billing Direction - 15 July 2008.
[i.12] Spain - Orden Calidad ITC 912 2006.
[i.13] Denmark - National IT and Telecom Agency (Bilag 4: Minimumskrav til kvaliteten af de udbudte
forsyningspligtydelser). .
[i.14] France - Arrêté du 01 février 2002 sur les "factures des services téléphoniques" NOR:
ECOC0200002A.
[i.15] 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 and of
rules on Information Society services.
[i.16] ISO 9001-2000: "Quality management systems -- Requirements".
[i.17] Directive 98/10/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 1998 on the
application of open network provision (ONP) to voice telephony and on universal service for
telecommunications in a competitive environment.
3 Definitions and abbreviations
3.1 Definitions
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms and definitions apply:
billing: activity, within a Service Provider, which aims at charging a customer either by producing an invoice or by
decreasing a prepaid account
NOTE: Billing usually involves three main types of activity:
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.
customer: user who is responsible for payment for the Electronic Communication services
metering principles: set of non ambiguous principles set by a Service Provider to define and meter the Electronic
Communications service it offers to its Customers
service provider: organization that provides Electronic Communications services to users and customers
pricing: set of Billed Quantity Valuation Methods and Unit Prices
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
GRAPA The Global Revenue Assurance Professional Association
IPTV Television over Internet Protocol
MOS Mean Opinion Score
STF Specialist Task Force
TMF TeleManagement Forum
TV Television
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol
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7 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
4 Summary of the review of available regulatory
requirements
Several documents from national regulatory bodies in Europe were communicated to the STF expert Team. It seems
from an informal survey (see annex A) that such documents/rules are not available in all the countries. The following
clauses provide a short summary of documents received by STF 375 Team and the User Group on metering, charging
and billing.
Some parts of the following texts are also copied from the messages or comments received by the STF. They are quoted
in "italic".
There is no regulation documents in France but it should be noted that the "Arrêté du 1 février 2002 relatif aux factures
des services téléphoniques" [i.14] defines the mandatory contents of a bill, including taxes, the billing period and
detailing when needed the types of subscriptions, flat rates and when requested the detailed bills including e.g. call
numbers, call durations and locations.
4.1 Criteria currently implemented in regulatory requirements
It appears that some parameters are currently defined on the basis of ETSI Guides such as EG 202 057-1 [i.3] or
EG 201 769-1 [i.4] (see clause 5.1) and are shared by different countries, such as Billing/Charging correctness, Billing
Accuracy, Billing complaints.
The documents from Finland, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom are summarized in this clause.
4.1.1 Charging/Billing correctness. Billing Accuracy
These parameters are the most commonly implemented in different European countries.
Finland
Clause 3 of national regulation [i.9] defines "Charging Correctness" and includes the following text:
"Charging shall be carried out so that data collection records containing a charging error due to the
telecommunications operator's own activity does not occur in more than 0.01% of all data collection records. Errors
detected and corrected before billing, errors detected through complaints from customers, and errors detected by the
operators themselves after billing are considered as charging errors. In order to fulfil this requirement, the
telecommunications operator shall monitor the amount of incorrect data collection records."
The principles agreed in Finland are that operators self-monitor the charging correctness and check that the results are
within the limits defined above. The national regulator has the right to cross-check that the requirements defined in the
regulation are fulfilled (e.g. analysis of available statistics). If problems are identified the regulator can request the
operator to correct the situation.
The regulation defining the basic requirements, operators fulfilling the requirements and the regulator supervising has
been seen as an appropriate method to ensure reliable metering and billing.
Germany
The technical requirements laid down in clause 5 of the Telecommunication Customer Protection Ordinance [i.10] are
to ensure minimum accuracy of metering and billing systems and hence to give customers confidence in the accuracy of
the charges levied for connection-dependent telecommunications services provided for the public.
The document defines criteria and clauses to determine the accuracy of charging, such as:
• The accuracy when time is recorded continuously. The call duration and time of usage are calculated with an
accuracy of 1 second, and converted in tariffs, providing the computed call charge.
• The accuracy for intervals recorded between time pulses, including when available the discounts or mark-ups.
• The discounts and mark-ups have to be taken into account.
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8 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
• The price for every communication event is determined on the basis of net tariffs, taking into account the
statutory turnover tax. Note that the gross rate has to be computed with an accuracy of two decimal places of
the amount.
All measures taken in the process of metering and charging have to be recorded and kept by the provider at least for the
period of time laid in clause 6, paragraph 3 of the Telecommunications Carriers Data Protection Ordinance [i.10].
It should be noted that these statements do not cover volume-sensitive telecommunications services.
Portugal
ANACOM has defined a statement on cost accounting system of PTCommunicações for the fixed telephone service
(Article 35 of the Regulations for the Fixed Telephone Service Operation) and leased lines service (article 29 of the
regulations for the public telecommunication network operation). This defined the obligation to introduce a cost
accounting system appropriate to the application of established tariff principles.
Such an approach has some similarities with those defined in TS 102 845 [i.1].
More details are available on the web site of ANACOM (http://www.anacom.pt).
Spain
The article 110 in BoE n°77 [i.12] is intended to define mechanisms aiming to ensure the billing correctness. Chapter V
is dedicated to billing quality. It should be noted that the basis for Spanish rules is EG 202 057-1 [i.3] (see clause 5.1 of
the present document).
The scope of Chapter V defined above applies to all operators providing all types of Electronic Communications for
users and having a minimum annual turnover defined by this regulation. These operators have to implement a global
system to ensure the billing quality monitoring.
Billing quality monitoring takes into account the connection duration, the connection distance and the volume of
exchanged information.
A special clause of the document details the "detailed billing allocation". It lists the different items that have to be
defined in the bill, e.g. billing period, detail of all billed communications, aggregated data by tariff groups, taxes, etc.
United Kingdom
Ofcom regulates the accuracy of bills issued by providers of electronic communications services and has published the
statement "The Ofcom Metering & Billing scheme" under the "General Condition 11" [i.11]. The process and the
statements are described with a lot of details.
Providers with a minimum annual turnover have to seek and obtain approval of their metering and billing systems from
third-party assessors against a prescribed standard intended to ensure that compliant systems will deliver accurate bills."
The rules define the rounding and resolution that influence the charge that appears on bills. It applies to two types of
tariffs: Public domain Tariff and bespoke tariff.
The rules also detail the inaccuracy limits that define the maximum number of permitted tolerance errors.
One specific clause 4.8 defines the "Individual Bill accuracy" and covers error handling and customer complaints
(clause 4.8.2).
4.1.2 Billing complaints
This parameter is also one of the most common defined by the regulators.
Denmark
The criteria are defined in "Bilag 4: Minimumskrav til kvaliteten af de udbudte forsyningspligtydelser" [i.13].
It is noted that these criteria are based on EG 201 769-1 [i.4] (see also clause 5.1).
In particular clause 5 "Regningskalger" defines the billing complaints from the customers. It is defined as 0,10 % for
basic voice services, ISDN.
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9 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
Spain
Chapter V, article 21 is dedicated to "Users complaints on bill contents" and refer to a specific rule on "conflict
regulations" and to the parameters described in EG 202 057-1 [i.3] such as "Bill correctness complaints" and "Prepaid
account credit correctness complaints".
Germany
The document [i.10] defined in the informative references does not refer explicitly to customers complaints. However, it
may be noted that specific clauses such as "it must be ensured that any outages of the metering and billing system do
not lead to unjustified charges within the framework of call charge accounting" may be linked with customer's
enquiries or complaints.
United Kingdom
As indicated in the previous clause a specific clause 4.8 defines the "Individual Bill accuracy" and covers error handling
and Customer complaints identifying the actions to be taken by the Service provider when it identifies that a customer
has been overcharged (e.g. through a customer enquiry).
4.2 Some specific criteria
Some regulators have provided detailed parameters to ensure a proper check of bills' accuracy and billing process.
Germany
Time, duration and locations of calls may influence significantly charges and bills. The document of the German
regulator defines in particular "Time metering – Master Clock – Recording of the distance".
Time metering defines the maximum differences that may occur and that may affect the accuracy (500 milliseconds or
1 second, depending on the conditions).
The Master Clock and Official time Standard are also defined. For the Master Clock the accuracy, i.e. the deviation of
the master clock in dependence on the time, may not exceed 10exp(-7) within every second. The time of the master
clock may deviate from the time of the official time standard by up to 3 seconds.
The regulation document also defines the principles for distance recording, based on the call numbers registered for the
calling and the called party.
Spain
As the BoE n°77 refers to EG 202 057-1 [i.3] it defined also the parameters "Response time for admin/billing enquiries"
The annex II defines the conditions applicable to the global system ensuring billing quality. This annex also defines the
measurement accuracy values (in milliseconds or percentages as relevant, billing punctuality, etc.).
United Kingdom
The rules define in annexes specific criteria for accesses/services such as fixed publicly available telephony service,
Mobile PATS, High speed internet, VoIP. Some of them are mandatory, some are voluntary.
The annexes define in more details the allowable measurement tolerance and inaccuracy limits.
Depending on the services, the allowable measurement tolerances deal with variables such as Duration, Time of the
day, Count and value of Charges, volume, count and value of aggregate charges.
Depending on the services, the inaccuracy limits deal with variables such as value overcharged, Events over recorded,
count of events overcharged, specific usage events over counted and over-recorded, events over counted.
For mobile PATS and High speed internet billing is considered separately for pre-paid charging and post-paid charging.
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10 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
4.3 Conformity/conformance/certification
The national regulators seem to have different approaches about conformity/conformance/certification of bodies in
change of checking the billing quality or billing process.
Finland
It has been noted from the survey from the STF that Finland has not seen appropriate to create any third party auditing
or certification system.
This position appears different from the approaches of the other national regulators such as Germany, Spain and UK
which define rules, such as those available in TS 102 846 [i.2].
Germany
Under clause 5, paragraph 3 of the Telecommunication Customer Protection Ordinance proof of compliance with the
technical requirements has to be furnished by the service providers. The procedure to be followed is published in the
Official Gazette: Administrative Order 6/2001, RegTP Official Gazette 1/2001.Communication on Proof of Compliance
as required by clause 5 of the Telecommunications Customer Protection Ordinance (TKV).
Portugal
ICP ANACOM promoted audits of Cost Accounting Systems carried out by independent entities.
Spain
Chapter II, Article 6 defines "Audit for Quality of Service".
Chapter V Billing Quality, Article 19 "Accreditation form" indicates that Operators have to provide once a year an
Audit report produced by an independent entity. This article refers to the Standard ISO 9001-2000 [i.16].
United Kingdom
The process of managing risks to Total Metering and Billing System accuracy is subject to audit by the Approval Body.
The clause 5.1 defines the Assessment process including the Approval Body appointment, the initial assessment, the
main assessment, approval and certification.
5 An overview of standardization within ETSI
In all the standardization Bodies producing standards on services or networks, information on metering and billing may
be found (see annex B). It was not the intention of the present document to consider all these materials but only to
review standards on metering and billing from the User point of view.
The main documents produced by ETSI have been developed by TC STQ and User Group.
5.1 User related QoS
One of the main documents in this field developed by ETSI TC STQ is the EG 202 057-1 [i.3] "User related QoS
parameter definitions and measurements; part 1: General". Another EG 201 769-1 [i.4] "parameters for voice telephony
service required under the ONP Voice Telephony Directive 98/10/EC [i.17]" may be used as alternative.
The following parameters related to billing are defined in the quoted ETSI Guides:
• Response time for admin/billing enquiries EG 202 057-1 [i.3], clause 5.8. The measure of this parameter
applies to enquiries addressed to call centres and is defined by the mean time to answer or by the percentage of
calls answered within 20 seconds. EG 201 769-1 [i.4], clause 5.7 provides a similar parameter however
without referring specifically to billing enquiries.
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11 ETSI TR 102 847 V1.1.1 (2010-06)
• Bill correctness complaints EG 202 057-1 [i.3], clause 5.11. This parameter (expressed in %) describes the
percentage of bills resulting in a customer complaint. Even if this parameter takes into account the types of
billing errors it does neither detail the types of complaints nor check the validity of these complaints. This
parameter is complementary to those defined in TS 102 845 [i.1]. EG 201 769-1 [i.4], clause 5.9 defines the
same parameter but is less detailed than in EG 202 057-1 [
...