Offload the expensive OCS!

Particularly where new services are heavily dependent on high-cost Online Charging Systems (OCS) and where, as is common in today’s market, they involve spending limit caps, Service Control delivers key advantages versus legacy BSS system alternatives. Unlike those options, it delivers an easily and fully-configurable service delivery engine, full visibility into and control of subscriber activity and total real-time control.

Service Control does not replicate the OCS. But by removing the monetary requirements and fitting all pricing models into categories within a bucket structure (which can be used to represent a monetary value as a whole), it enables CSPs to remove their dependencies on expensive and sticky OCS for new service launches, and instead leverage configuration rather than expensive back-office OCS development when change is required.

This creates a new, lean approach to service delivery that allows regulatory requirements to be addressed with here-to-for unforeseen (in the industry) agility.

Speed is of the Essence

In highly-competitive markets, versatility is key to opening up new revenue streams that may present themselves only fleetingly, perhaps as regulatory statutes change in unpredictable ways. Here, Service Control assists by providing Subscriber Usage control, Network Experience monitoring, and the ability to improve subscriber interaction and engagement. Service Control’s real-time enablement layer, with only small changes to its core infrastructure, can support incremental new services in minimal times.

Tapping new sources of income!

Where profits are declining and customer spend is stagnant or traditionally dominant services (like voice) have been commoditized, Service Control can help access and exploit new revenue streams. Its network-based control infrastructure enables differentiation on the basis of either the service or the subscriber and partners and other key players in service delivery are easily accommodated into the back-end enabling critical revenue shares to be quickly implemented.

Service Control increases ARPA from new players while not reducing the bundled content delivered to end-users. An example might be using Service Control to support an innovative sponsored data offering. This is an excellent example of the sort of use case that Service Control can address but legacy BSS cannot! Sponsored data requires splitting data bits into different buckets, where one stream goes to the consumer’s individual bucket and the other to a common one, sponsored by a content provider. It works like an 0800 number or an ecommerce site where a second party pays for postage on the goods purchased. Having many people consuming the same sponsored bucket is a particularly tricky challenge and requires fast, capable and lean systems in place. Partner enablement, roaming buckets, and Freemium service offerings are other use cases addressed by Service Control.