The FCC, CTIA, and the international association for the wireless industry, agree that real-time SMS messages warning customers they are about to exceed their plan and will face higher fees are the solution to meeting new FCC bill shock standards.. This has presented a killer opportunity for OSS/BSS vendors to ride to the rescue. Seems easy enough – the question is why has it has taken so long for CSPs to care enough to take action. It could be that they were more concerned about maintaining revenue fees from roaming and overage that they lost sight of how this impacted the customer experience and churn.
CTIA members agree measures must be taken quickly. By October 17, 2012, CTIA participating carriers will provide customers with at least two out of the four notifications for data, voice, text and international roaming. The remaining notification alerts will be completed by April 17, 2013.
"Whether mandated by government regulations or not, mobile operators around the globe must take measures sooner than later to keep up with the changing dynamic of the customer-centric mobile ecosystem," Mary Clark, Senior Vice President, Roaming at Syniverse says. "Today's subscribers are no longer looking for a provider to simply connect their devices. End users have become accustomed to a heightened level of always-on services, and they are unwilling to remain with an operator that only meets their basic needs – they are looking for a provider that exceeds service expectations and shows its dedication to their satisfaction. And these users are not afraid to leave if they are not receiving a level of service they believe could be offered elsewhere."
Real-Time Intelligence
From an OSS/BSS perspective, the trick is capturing and generating real-time usage from the network and billing layers and delivering that to the customer before bill shock can happen. OSS/BSS solutions can help create a personalized, enhanced and transparent end-user experience.
"For operators, the task of achieving this comes down to instantaneously capturing and analyzing subscriber experience data to ensure comfort and control while proactively resolving issues – what we refer to as the concept of Real-Time Intelligence, or RTI, Clark adds. One big reason bill shock occurs is because operators have only partial or extremely limited awareness of subscriber usage when roaming on a visited network. The visiting network generates call details and sends these records back to the home operator after the fact, which makes real-time roaming updates difficult.
"The length of this process spans from a few hours to a few days or weeks, depending on which technology protocol is used," Clark adds. "Regardless, the time lapse between the subscriber's usage taking place and the home operator's awareness of it contributes to the risk of bill shock."
It gets more complicated in a post-paid model, which is prevalent in the U.S. Many operators haven't aggregated and rated their subscribers' usage in real-time in a post-paid environment. Rather, this process typically takes place at the end of the bill cycle at the end of the month.
Limited adoption of BSS systems also contribute to bill shock. Operators need systems that inform subscribers about the cost of using their services while roaming and enable a live, constant communication flow between the operator and the subscriber regarding their usage and the related costs.
"In our view, by tackling these three factors, operators will be able to significantly reduce the risk of bill shock, with the added benefits of greatly lowering their level of uncollectable wholesale costs, empowering subscribers to confidently use services while protecting their brand."
