As a service provider, you might have one or more legacy prepaid systems that charge all your prepaid subscribers and, at the same time, one or more billing systems for charging all your postpaid subscribers. You probably also find that maintaining two types of charging systems is both expensive to operate and not flexible enough for creating the hybrid charging plans required by your subscribers.

Deploying a true convergent charging solution would be your preferred solution; however, transitioning your subscribers from all your old proprietary charging servers to a single new convergent charging solution may not be something you are comfortable with.

Recently the service broker has emerged as a network solution to blend communications applications together in order to create new value for your subscribers. This is particularly true when one of the blended applications is your prepaid system. In such a case the service broker is a way for you to offer new services to all your prepaid subscribers.

The service broker is also the perfect network element to handle any network migration scenario, such as the migration to a new convergent charging solution. Indeed, the service broker allows you to dynamically route any charging requests to any charging server. As a result, by using a step by step approach, you will be able to reduce the risk inherent with any migration:

• First, by planning the subscriber by subscriber migration. Charging requests for all subscribers should be routed to the Service Broker. Then the service broker can dynamically route the request to the appropriate charging server depending on the subscriber migration status (old prepaid system or new convergent charging solution).
• Second, by planning the service by service migration. Some of you might need to handle such a migration service by service (voice, SMS, data …). In a similar way, all appropriate service charging requests should be sent to the service broker, and the service broker will dynamically deal with the final routing aspect, in a very flexible manner.

In conclusion, deploying a convergent charging solution that natively integrates the service brokering capabilities is the most appropriate and secure way to proceed.

A convergent charging solution will dramatically reduce your OPEX (News - Alert) associated with all your charging servers and will provide you with the right tool to offer hybrid charging plans to your subscribers.

About Amdocs jNetX (News - Alert) Service Broker

The Amdocs jNetX Service Broker enables end users to decide which set of applications they want to use. For example, it allows prepaid users to subscribe simultaneously to additional services such as ring back tone, personal call management, parental control, ring back when free, virtual private network and so on. The result is increased revenues for service providers, reduced cost and considerably improved time to market.

The Amdocs (News - Alert) jNetX Service Broker breaks the technical barriers that prevent multiple services from multiple vendors to be simultaneously subscribed by and delivered to the end user. It enables service interaction between a combination of independent:

• IN services or features (IN Mediation)
• SIP/IMS services or features (SCIM)
• Internet/Web Services

The Amdocs jNetX Service Broker is used to consolidate, in real time, the interaction of services running within the Amdocs jNetX Service Broker and/or outside of it (external applications servers). When external applications or features are involved, the Amdocs jNetX Service Broker takes care of the appropriate protocol conversion. As a consequence, service providers can re-use their legacy IN applications in an IMS environment and vice versa and easily bridge IN and IMS services together with Web Services and/or SOA. Additionally the Amdocs jNetX convergent technology enables:

• The Amdocs jNetX Service Broker to simultaneously communicate with online or offline charging systems (e.g. over Diameter Ro and Rf), with User Data Repositories (e.g. over Diameter Sh, Radius and LDAP) or with any other network elements that are required.

• The Amdocs jNetX Service Broker to simultaneously host any communications applications. Amdocs jNetX offers a large portfolio of commercial-off-the-shelf communications applications that provide rich communications services, but at the same time enable services providers to replace their existing legacy IN applications (such as VPN, NTS (News - Alert), etc.) that are well on their way to reaching their respective end of life.

• Finally, the Amdocs jNetX Service Broker can easily evolve to an Amdocs Prepaid solution or to an Amdocs Convergent Charging solution. The overall goal is to facilitate a smooth replacement of costly and inflexible legacy IN prepaid systems with the new generation of Amdocs Prepaid or Amdocs Convergent Charging systems.

Many service providers currently using the Amdocs jNetX Service Broker started by combining IN or SIP services together with their existing and legacy prepaid system.