Overview

Online billing is one of the most important components of 3GPP network architecture. In order to better guide the construction of billing support system in 3G and 4G environment, 3GPP organization proposed the reference structure of online charging/billing system (OCS) in 32.815, and provided an open and general real-time billing system framework, supporting unified billing based on load bearing, communication and content. Separating the communication control function from the billing function, and establishing the direct interaction between the billing system and the communication / service control, so that the billing system is fully involved in the service process, that is, the users use the service while OCS system charges. In such a system, we can not only use the powerful ability of independent billing system to provide the flexibility almost equivalent to real-time billing system, but also take advantage of the real-time characteristics in the service process to minimize the cost of overdue bills.

Key features

• It supports event-based billing types (such as short message, content services), communication-based billing types (such as voice, unified netflow billing, content netflow billing) and transaction-based billing types (such as payment services)
  

• It supports multi service integrated billing, real-time billing, the blending of prepaid and postpaid billing; at the same time, it has flexible service charge strategies and service overlapping binding capabilities
  

• It has good horizontal expansion ability and can expand according to the growth of business volume
  

• It has a highly reliable disaster recovery mechanism from the access layer to application layer and data layer, at the same time, it has an extreme open and unified billingability to ensure the stability and high availability of the system
  

• It has the built-in ABM ability, meanwhile, it supports connecting to the external ABM, meeting the operation requirements of seamless integration with other support systems.
  

Service value

• Real time billing and charging can prevent overdraft and control the risk of overdue bills to shorten the period of fund recovery and reduce the cost of collection
  

• Providing customers with general, customized and real-time reminding service to ensure a good customer experience
  

• Through the real-time message interaction with the network element, it is possible for the support system to control the network according to the service needs, making the pricing elements greatly expanded, providing the technical basis for the introduction of various fine packages.