Imagine you run a construction firm. You see the beautiful new land you just acquired and start thinking about the nice apartments that will be built and go for sale once the work is over – 3 bedrooms, a big living room, a spacious kitchen and a balcony. You also plan a nice swimming pool on the ground floor, along with a gym and a tennis court. These add-ons will greatly increase the revenue you can make from this new construction. But then you look down and remember that it all starts with the foundations. Maybe some consumers will tear down one bedroom and enlarge the living room, or an enterprise might buy a few floors and set-up offices there. Nevertheless, the foundations must be there for the building to go up. Without them, there is no selling to consumers or enterprises. That´s exactly what is happening with 5G monetization, where charging is the foundation that needs to be in place to secure that future 5G use cases will be profitable and scalable.
Take the proactive approach and start BSS evolution now
According to the Ericsson Consumer and Market Insight report “Harnessing the 5G consumer potential”, a proactive approach to 5G will result in a 34 percent higher 5G ARPU by 2030 as compared to a passive one. The enterprise market offers even more revenue opportunities, with the promise that 5G will revolutionize the digitalization of many different industries, such as automotive, energy, public safety, manufacturing and healthcare. And even though the 5G consumer and enterprise use cases are not known yet, there is a growing need to evolve BSS to meet 5G demands, support and monetize the possible use cases that will be launched in different markets. The CSPs that start early have a much bigger chance to grab a bigger piece of the revenue opportunity.
Service providers will decide which role they will play in the 5G ecosystem – network developer, service enabler or service creator. Each role demands its own level of investment, while promising more revenue opportunities as CSPs go up the value chain. And they can even play several roles at the same time, depending on the use cases and capabilities needed. But there is one thing that is common for all and that is the foundation that opens the door of BSS to 5G monetization: the charging layer. In the new 5G 3GPP Service-Based Architecture, the charging function becomes the consolidation point of all rating and charging requests, for both online and offline services. For every session, message or call there is a trigger to the charging function, even if this is a post-paid event that just needs to be summarized in the customer invoice. The charging function is responsible to generate all CDRs, or in turn trigger the online charging system (OCS) or converged charging system (CCS) for real-time charging.
The enabler to start the 5G journey
This charging function plays a critical role in the integration of new 5G SA networks with BSS, but that´s only half of the story. In order to guarantee standards evolution (5G 3GPP standards are quite new and keep evolving) and to secure quick access to new services and parameters, the charging function must be flexible enough to allow protocol updates and information normalization through configuration, preferably through a graphical user interface that simplifies the operations, as these tasks are usually quite complex. The ability to easily include a new 5G parameter in an existing service-based interface integration, and then to pull it up from that network interface all the way to the product catalog will make or break use cases. That´s one of the key reasons why DNA Finland chose Ericsson Charging to implement the charging function in their 5G deployment: “DNA competes in an ever more demanding, advanced communications market with plans for 5G. To succeed in this market a gradual transformation of our Charging operations with service agility and optimal TCO was needed, “said Ville Virtanen, Head of Core and IP Network and Charging in DNA Finland.
The same is true for network slicing, another key 5G service that will revolutionize the way CSPs provide their services to different customers. A flexible charging function must be able to identify network slices through different parameters, and then also identify different services used inside each specific network slice. With this information sorted out the rating engine can use these parameters in the rating logic and charge different values based on any information that the charging function can normalize – from basic data, voice and SMS to new measures such as quality of service, bandwidth, network slice type or latency. Those “currencies” will take a central role in the 5G ecosystem, especially considering enterprise use cases for different industries.
Even though the charging function does not play an active role in the actual rating logic – that remains with the online charging system or the converged charging system – there is no way to use intelligence or creativity to build new services without a powerful charging function that simplifies the work needed to introduce new protocols and parameters used by the catalog to build the products and then by the rating, charging and billing engines to actually charge the customer for those new 5G services and use cases.
Unlocking the potential of 5G monetization
In short, BSS evolution starts with charging, and it should start now. As the best way to unlock the full potential of 5G monetization, the charging function plays a key role in the rating and charging of 5G services. And that is true independently of the position the operator takes in the ecosystem (network developer, service enabler, service creator), the use case and the market (consumer or enterprise). The introduction of the 3GPP service-based architecture marks the beginning of the 5G journey, reshaping telco charging and monetization functions. By creating a good foundation, CSPs will be ready to explore new markets, business models and industries with 5G whenever there is a market need. And market need means revenue.
Are you interested in learning more about the key capabilities needed by BSS, and specifically by charging, to capture the opportunities offered by 5G? Download the new eBrief, Capturing 5G monetization opportunities with 5G charging.
You can also check how Telstra Australia transformed its prepaid ecosystem and customer journeys with Ericsson Digital Experience Platform and Ericsson Charging in preparation for 5G.
