Innovating in Charging Flexibility!

In today's telecommunications landscape, charging models continuously evolve, trying to keep up with the advancements made in the offerings of telco operators. With the widespread acceptance of smart phones and mobile internet, subscribers are using data services more than ever before. This imposes a limitation to legacy charging systems designed for voice calls and messaging services. Next Generation charging solutions can play a major role in the service delivery chain. They have to be more and more service-aware since they need to charge innovative marketing offerings.

NGINius-Charging™ is an end-to-end solution from INTRACOM TELECOM for real-time convergent charging realization. This solution has been developed on top of the HP OpenCall suite of platforms and meets the demands of Next Generation convergent networks.

NGINius-Charging™ adopts an account-centric model, which is not restricted to the business systems layer, but spans all the way down to the network infrastructure. Operators are enabled to deploy numerous services and manage the profiles of their subscribers in a unified manner. All account types are supported – native prepaid, postpaid and hybrid – allowing the introduction of commercially-attractive payment schemes, which can be launched to market quickly and cost effectively.

A NGINius-Charging™-based solution enables charging in real-time, for:

• Voice, data, multimedia and messaging services.
• Fixed, mobile and IP / IMS networks.

NGINius-Charging™, the online charging solution from INTRACOM TELECOM, has carefully been designed to offer:

A Clear Value Proposition

• Account-centric design fulfills today's market requirements for on-line charging.
• Allows for offerings to targeted specific market segments for maximizing profitability and service uptake.
• Enables a common and rich service portfolio for all subscribers, supporting prepaid, postpaid and hybrid subscriber payment models.
• Provides real-time credit control – powerful convergent rating engine supports both real-time and post-processing rating.
• Covers all layers of charging convergence – prepaid to postpaid, network, service & type.
• Personalized, sophisticated features, allowing telco operators to differentiate from the competition.
• Field-proven – fast and easy integration into a multi-vendor network and OSS / BSS infrastructure.

Significant Cost Benefits

• Significantly lower CapEx & OpEx as compared to legacy prepaid systems – a result of the adoption of new technologies.
• Flexible pricing schemes, pay-as-you-grow licensing.

High Capabilities

• Vast expertise gained from the deployment and support of prepaid turnkey projects in wireline, wireless and NG networks.
• Domain experts' development teams employing modern software development practices.
• Extensive experience in building Intelligent Network (IN) and charging applications.
• High-performance in-house lab facilities accommodating best-of-breed technology equipment.

Excellence in Project Deployment

• The deployment of applications and solutions take into account the following key service delivery factors:
  • Uninterrupted systems operation.
  • Business continuity.
  • Minimum downtime.
• Experienced professional teams ensuring rapid applications deployment on time and on budget.
• Extensive use of project management certified processes and tools.
• System integration, consultancy and project management services.
• Technical support services.

INTRACOM TELECOM's NGINius-Charging™ constitutes an innovative approach to the traditional real-time charging and billing mechanism for voice, data and content services. NGINius-Charging™ meets the increasing demands of the telecommunications market for charging and network convergence.

NGINius-Charging™ introduces an account-centric model, which is not restricted to the business systems layer only. This allows telecom operators to deploy divergent services, but at the same time, to provide a unified management model for the corresponding user profiles. For instance, wireline and GSM network services can be offered while leaving the business layer (e.g. billing and customer care) intact.

With NGINius-Charging™, operators are given:

• A solution that is field-proven, future-proof and cost-effective.
• A solution that is quickly and easily integrated into multi-vendor network and IT infrastructure.
• The benefit of short time-to-market for new features and customizations.
• The convenience of an intuitive, easy-to-use Web self care for carrying out configurations.
• A future proof solution.

The NGINius-Charging™ core functions and their characteristics are given below:

Advanced Charging Suite (ACS) is a set of additional NGINius-Charging™ features, which can be deployed as standalone, or as part of the complete charging solution. ACS consists of the following charging services:

• Roaming Cost Control (RCC), for offering roamers the capability to control their spending through the introduction of a credit limitation mechanism. This service enables session and credit control in real-time, and allows subscribers to receive notifications and warnings regarding their usage while roaming abroad.
• Incoming Call Bonus (ICB), for rewarding subscribers when receiving calls over a certain period of time. This service applies for both mobile and fixed line calls.