Billing Augmentation Engine for Telecom Service Pricing
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Large billing systems, particularly in telecommunications, are inflexible and require long lead times to implement new services, leading to delays in service offerings and revenue opportunities due to their inability to account for new pricing structures without significant modifications.
Innovation Solution
A billing augmentation method that uses an intercarrier vendor's billing augmentation engine to analyze messages and generate additional billing events, allowing for incremental or differential charging to match new service prices without modifying the existing billing system, enabling the introduction of new services without upgrading the billing system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the billing system is modified to support new services, then the service provider can offer new services, but the implementation takes ten to twelve months or more
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary billing event generation system that sits between the existing billing system and the service delivery infrastructure. This intermediary component enables new service billing without requiring modifications to the core billing system, thus resolving the contradiction between adaptability and implementation time by mediating the integration process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the billing functionality into separate, independent components. Instead of modifying the entire billing system, new service billing is handled through separate billing events that are generated and processed independently. This segmentation allows new services to be added without affecting the core system, reducing implementation time while maintaining adaptability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the billing system is upgraded to handle new pricing models, then new services can be properly accounted for, but the existing system must be modified or overhauled
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs an intermediary layer that translates new service requirements into billing events compatible with the existing system. This intermediary billing event generation mechanism allows the system to handle new pricing models without direct modification to the core billing infrastructure, thus reducing system complexity while maintaining adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates billing event copies or representations that mirror the structure and format expected by the existing billing system. By copying the familiar billing event structure and populating it with new service data, the system can account for new pricing models without requiring structural modifications to the billing system itself.
3Reliability
If the service provider waits for billing system capability before introducing new services, then proper billing support is ensured, but market responsiveness is severely hampered
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary billing event generation capabilities that are prepared in advance and can be immediately activated when new services are introduced. This preliminary preparation of billing mechanisms ensures that billing support is already in place before services are launched, eliminating the need to wait for system modifications and thereby improving market responsiveness while maintaining reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the traditional mechanical approach of modifying billing system infrastructure with a software-based billing event generation mechanism. This substitution allows for rapid deployment and configuration of billing support for new services without the time-consuming process of system modifications, thus improving productivity while ensuring reliability through standardized billing event processing.
Data Source
AI summary
System and method for providing augmented billing services. Where a billing system cannot keep pace with new services being marketed and the specialized pricing associated with such new services, a system and method are provided that generate a billing augmentation messages that are sent to the billing entity and that cause an incremental increase of a bill for the handling of a particular message type. The incremental increase is equivalent to a charge that the billing system is already configured to bill. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the message is an electronic message such as an SMS message and the billing augmentation messages are generated by and sent from an intercarrier vendor.