Old billing systems are too slow, dumb and expensive
Mobile network operators (MNOs) are struggling to monetise their networks, claims telco cloud consultant service Totogi, which has launched a Totogi Charging System (TCS) to fix the problem. TCS is presented as the first multi-tenant, charging system sold as a software service engineered exclusively for the public cloud.
Rapidly changing market conditions and consumer expectations have left many MNO telcos behind, so they have an uphill battle finding subscribers, retaining them and milking revenue from them. To make matter worse, their legacy charging systems are holding them back. “They are slow, dumb, and expensive,” said Totogi CEO and founder Danielle Royston. “Telcos spend millions of unnecessary dollars on hardware to anticipate the fluctuating capacity needs of their charger. Then their plans are marketed to the masses and take months to deploy,” said Royston.
With TCS telcos can connect their network, add their plans, add their subscribers and everything can run in days, as opposed the year it used to take with old-worlde charging systems, claims Totogi. The Totogi Plan is designed to be so simple the marketing department can deploy it in days without assistance from IT. The pay per transaction scheme has an initial free tier up to 500m transactions per month. After this, it is priced at $0.00005 per transaction in a pay-as-you-grow model. Telcos can save 80% of the running costs associated with on premise, private cloud or cloud ported charging systems, claims the vendor.
Since the TCS is totally cloud orientated telcos can get the world’s best computing, storage, database and software resources to help them personalise plans across the board in a bid to stop churn, attract subscribers and grow ARPU. The charging engine can handle 1 million transactions per second (tps), which means it can support up to 1 billion active subscribers, with a plan to scale up to 6 billion.
“Only now are telcos starting to realise the value the public cloud can have on areas of their business,” said Royston, “charging is one area that has been left to a handful of older vendors and not seen any innovation for years. Some think charging is dead; we think it’s time for huge innovation in an area that can actually drive more revenue for a telco. It’s possible only now because of the tech available from the hyperscalers.”
The Plan Design tool lets marketers create easy plans (or tariffs) for subscribers. New inventions include a feature that gives access to competitive plan data loaded into the system, the ability to model plan impact and uptake before launch, and the ability to bundle pre-negotiated digital and content offers like AppleTV, Ticketmaster,and Booking.com into tariff plans with a few clicks. This lets telcos send offers to mobile users, such as the popular current campaign by one UK MNO that tempts users with the words: “Sign up to X and get an AppleTV subscription free for 3 months.”
An Auto Plan feature uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to suggest and run plans automatically tailored to each subscriber. Totogi is available to operators everywhere. “We can deploy new systems in days. Potential customers can conduct a month-long pilot that runs in the Totogi production environment. If customers like it, they just continue to add plans and add subscribers,” said Royston.