Billing Charging Evolution Accumulates Higher Revenues for Network Operators

The telecom industry has continuously evolved during the past 30 years that GSM mobile technology has been active. However, Transferred Account Procedures, the mechanism for roaming billing and settlement, has not moved forward at the same pace as bandwidth or the speed of networks.

Operators are not able to effectively monetize the majority of IoT devices using their networks under the volume-based approach by TAP. Devices are frequently silent for long periods of time and generate minimal volumes of data while generating significant numbers of events in the form of location updates.

With Billing Charging Evolution, operators are enabled to implement an array of different charging models for roaming IoT devices, including threshold-based and differential charging. A new Kaleido Intelligence study found that network operators that implement BCE and target low-bandwidth permanently roaming M2M/IoT connections can generate more than $5 billion in additional revenues cumulatively over the next five years.

Kaleido’s new research, “The Future of Clearing & Settlement — BCE & Blockchain in Roaming 2022,” also found that nearly one-third of wholesale roaming traffic will have migrated to the BCE standard by 2027.

Kaleido’s BCE MNO survey conducted in Q2 2022 suggested an anticipated migration period of 2.5-3 years, with BCE and the legacy TAP systems running in parallel during this timeframe. The combination of sluggish short-term take-up allied to a substantial bedding in time for BCE means that even by 2025, most telcos surveyed will see less than 10% of their settlement accounted for by the new billing and charging mechanism.

“While this might suggest a fairly widespread dissatisfaction with existing clearing house processes, the survey also indicates that only a handful of operators would seek to go it alone with BCE with the remainder opting for either fully or partly outsourced solutions,” said Windsor Holden, report author.