A highly informative look at Billing & Charging Evolution from Enghouse in partnership with independent market watchers Juniper finds 5G and IoT emerging as perfect business cases for finally escaping the restrictions of TAP
Since 1991, the telecom industry has used the Transferred Account Procedures (TAP) for roaming billing and settlement needs. Although TAP has served the industry well and is here to stay, the GSMA believes it’s too complex and rigid to support services like IoT and 5G. An alternative solution, Billing & Charging Evolution, BCE, has been implemented to serve what the body calls these “new industry requirements”.
The BCE protocol, then, is set to disrupt 30 years of roaming bills and settlement processes. That’s disruption a CEO would only agree to if there were real bottom-line benefits. And so, in a new webinar, available to download after registration here, Enghouse works this problem in collaboration with analysts Juniper Networks.
But the presentation—held in late November 2021—wasn’t just a generic ‘What is BCE?’ run-through. Instead, in Billing & Charging Evolution: The Future of Roaming Clearing Services, hard questions and hard numbers get tabled. As the Juniper expert speaker, Senior Analyst Scarlett Woodford, states, for sure there are claims about BCE as enabling key improvements such as enhanced traffic filtering, flexible timescales, improved efficiency, and monetisation of new use cases: but what is the real future outlook for the protocol?
You can only answer that by evaluating the problems and challenges real-world operators have today, especially post- (or should we now be realists and go back to saying ‘in’?) pandemic. As Ms Woodford notes, COVID-19 “shifted operator priorities away from innovative collaboration such as the BCE” towards the consolidation of core network services, for instance. A distraction?
But they also want to do something about stopping the problem of leakage and bolstering revenue assurance. We know this is a big headache, and Juniper predicts operators will lose $484 million in roaming revenue to leakage this year alone, a figure that it believes could climb to more $2.1 billion inside five years. As a result, “Billing and charging evolution will be key to minimising revenue leakage,” she tells us.
Drivers for imminent BCE adoption
However, Juniper is very clear that delays in operator adoption of this new approach can’t solely be attributed to the pandemic. Historically, implementation of new processes in the telecommunication sector takes time—as much as ten years after initial discussions. At the same time, the pandemic has driven up the amount of IoT traffic (compensating for loss of human subscriber roaming), and so operators are also re-evaluating the efficiency of outsourcing settlement processes, given the requirement to pay minimum monthly fees and other inefficiencies.
As demand for international travel returns, operators will be keen to take control of their settlement process, she and her team believe. This also will be a BCE driver. On the one hand, it’s great that we may get back travelling (and so, roaming), and we all want to see 5G rolling out—but if the number of 5G roaming connections could be over 200 million in 2026 (she says it’s more like 5 million right now), an inability to distinguish between 4G and 5G data traffic will result in further operator revenue leak.
Ms Woodford’s presentation then gave a deep dive into the specifics of the BCE charging model, how COVID has affected the data and financial clearing market, and the interesting problem of the efficient monetisation of IoT roaming traffic – and explored the potential of blockchain. Complementing the market insight was the practical view offered by Enghouse’s Henning Lagerbielke.
Enghouse understand the adaptation of existing processes like interconnect and roaming – and what’s really happening. The Enghouse WRM platform therefore supports everything related to an operator business, from very low-level transaction handling processes all the way up to invoicing, reconciliation, and then accounts receivable—all of which have great significance in the BCE process.
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Bottom line: BCE is your best way to really get ready for new revenue streams from new services, as well as protecting your roaming margin. Get a readable summary of the discussion on the contribution WRM makes to getting you ready for the move to BCE. We also recommend you take a deep dive into the full webinar to understand how the GSMA’s BCE is set to disrupt 30 years of roaming billing and settlement processes.
