It may be a question of the VoIP chicken and egg, but whichever your opinion, the outcome is the same: service providers, hardware manufacturers, software developers, and content providers are in a perpetual race to help deliver new and exciting service offerings to the end customer. This means service providers are constantly looking for the newest cost effective and efficient means of delivering their services to subscribers.

 

The critical link in this endless chain of developments, however, is the service provider, as it connects the subscriber to the development side. But, because next-gen service providers are often in such a rush to bring new products and services to market, one element often gets ignored — and it is one thing that can lead to success or the inevitable downfall of any service provider: billing. The constant introduction of new content and new services creates a burden on services providers that they frequently are unable to handle. It is not uncommon for subscribers to spend considerable time on the phone with the provider hoping to resolve billing issues — often to no avail. This result is damning to the service provider, creating churn and a poor reputation for billing services. On the other hand, providers with few billing issues to resolve — those that have considered their options and invested wisely in an appropriate billing system — reap the benefits of the mistakes of their peers.

 

“As legacy billing systems do not support the latest VoIP and Rich Media Internet Communications applications, billing has been a significant challenge for many looking to deploy VoIP services,” confirmed Jon R. Doyle, vice president of business development for CommuniGate Systems.

 

For just those service providers that want to ensure their billing systems are capable of efficiently and accurately charging subscribers, regardless of what new services are rolled out, CommuniGate Systems (News - Alert) and Cylogistics have united to bring a unified solution to market. In this venture, the two firms have integrated Cylogistics’ billing services into CommuniGate’s rich media delivery platform. Indeed, the very point of this combined approach is to address the difficulties new enhanced services can present to billing departments without limiting service providers in their quest to beat the competition to market.  By deploying the combination of Cylogistics’ TrueBill and the CommuniGate Pro platform, carriers immediately have at their disposal a complete end-to-end solution that can hasten time to market, reduce deployment costs, and simplify billing all at once.

 

The carrier grade platform from CommuniGate — including the SIP Farm technology that ensures scalability and reliability (it has demonstrated a 10-million VoIP subscriber environment) — has been designed with the next generation carrier in mind, ready to introduce new revenue streams while increasing stickiness of service offerings and growing customer loyalty. The CommuniGate Pro platform has the capacity to handle all forms of IP communications — e-mail, IM, voice, video, mobile, and collaboration features — making it a prime candidate for carriers looking to solve the communications needs of both businesses and residential subscribers. 

 

The key, again, becomes accurately billing for service both old and new, which is where Cylogisitcs’ TrueBill software comes in. TrueBill is an integrated billing solution that supports a variety of business models and types of services. It can handle pre-paid, post-paid, real-time, multi-level, wholesale, and credit card billing plans, enabling providers to introduce services to the widest range of subscribers. In addition, TrueBill has a tax module that helps carriers ensure they are meeting federal, state, and local tax regulations. 

 

“By partnering with Cylogistics, we can give our carrier customers a complete turnkey solution that can be deployed today.  And Cylogistics’ TrueBill represents the best of breed in billing platforms, providing the features and flexibility required to meet our customers’ diverse business models, both today and tomorrow.”

 

Clearly, the race to deliver new services and content has no end in sight — nor should it. However, carriers and ISPs pacing themselves for the long haul, will be wise to ensure they are adequately prepared to handle the billing that should go hand in hand with the introduction and provisioning of services — at least is they intend on staying in the race for a while. By powering their services with the combination of five nines uptime from CommuniGate Pro and customizable reporting and billing options from Cylogistics, they will find themselves with a reliable end to end platform — and more happy subscribers.