What ends up happening is that fulfillment, billing and service delivery channels are not interconnected to provide the entire view of the subscriber; information is wasted. This is where bill shock usually occurs, which causes customer-churn and government policy infractions. And as tiered pricing plans become more prevalent, holding on to the old ways will become even more dangerous.

After combining real-time rating, charging and policy, service providers understand their subscribers to offer pricing choices based on their profile. Also, they can make bill payments and purchase third party applications. No longer are they unsure about what their plan covers, and this is proving to drive uptake in data services, as customers feel more confident in their purchasing options.

From the standpoint of creating new services and increasing revenue, real-

time, converged systems are essential. By managing subscribers and services this way, an operator has an instant view of user communication, behavior and spending. This type of profile management also enables knowledge of user status, presence, and location. All of these factors allow service providers to offer relevant services to their subscribers based on their habits. Also, they are able to up sell and cross sell services.

With flat-rate pricing, there is no incentive to promote heavier usage of data. Tiered pricing plans, both pre- and post-paid, allow service providers to fairly monetize the amount of data services used by subscribers. With real-time policy mechanisms, clear notification of usage and advice of charge and flexible, quick payment options greatly diminish the need for service providers to penalize subscribers for overages with fees or to throttle usage.

A leading EMEA group operator is using policy to build packages to match real, everyday usage patterns in order to target different market segments. For its customers it gives them the pricing simplicity, flexibility and control to match their service package to their immediate needs by selecting a ‘daily’ package, or to allow for future usage, by selecting a weekly or monthly package. In addition, users have the flexibility to select bundles according to

Another Tier 1 operator is using policy management tools to support the tremendous growth of data traffic it has experienced in the past two years and to promote 3rd party content. Using policy to support per-event charging of content downloads, zero rating traffic for promotions and 3rd party content and differential charging for roaming has led to the operator to increase its data ARPU by 9.2% and boosted non-SMS revenue by 55.4% year-on-year.

Essentially by knowing more about their subscribers, these service providers are using policy controls to create value and give their customers more options—not take them away.

In this era of anti-bill shock regulation and monstrous appetites for broadband from mobile subscribers, it seems like it could be harder than ever before to grow a business. Operators are being required to provide absolute transparency on pricing while having to manage exponential increases in network traffic, to keep their customers from trying out the competition. But oddly, policy solutions that might be perceived as merely the remedy to bill shock regulation, are actually serving a much higher purpose. They are enabling operators to increase revenue, greatly improve the customer experience, and protect the network from capacity strain.