Online Charging and Control System

Aricent’s Online Charging and Control System (OCCS) is a fully convergent solution for online control and unified charging of various voice, data and content services for any of the core networks used (e.g. GSM, GPRS and UMTS). The solution is capable of real-time credit control for pre-paid subscribers and usage limit supervision for post-paid subscribers. The system is 3GPP compliant for Ro and Rf interfaces and can re-use legacy BSS and OSS components, minimizing investment. The system adds value in application areas such as:

  1. Online Charging (pre- and post-delivery charging)
  2. Service Barring/Unbarring
  3. Voucher Management
  4. Reporting
  5. Loyalty Management

Aricent’s OCCS is a cost-efficient, scalable and highly reliable system that ensures stable operations, maximizes next generation revenues and improves revenue realization for cellular service providers.

Features

  1. Charging Gateway Functionality – OCCS offers session management for both prepaid and postpaid scenarios, generates Usage Detail Records (UDRs) for postpaid scenarios and supports simultaneous communication over varied real-time protocols, such as DIAMETER, OSA/PARLAY, GTP, XML/HTTP, CORBA etc. The system provides GTP prime (Ga) interface to the Network element (SGSN and GGSN) for data media flow
  2. Reporting Engine Functionality – OCCS has a complete configurable reporting framework for collecting Call Detail Records (CDRs) from IN, SMSC, and MMSC and generating reports based on operator preference. Inbuilt reports are available, such as subscriber reports, recharge reports, loyalty reports, traffic reports, IUC reports, VAS services reports, 3G services reports etc.
  3. Subscription and Loyalty Engine – OCCS has an inbuilt rule-based subscription engine with readily available adapters for flexible rating and charging at Intelligent Network (IN) over a CORBA interface. The loyalty engine is integrated with the reporting framework to analyze loyalty schemes provided by the service provider
  4. Operation and Maintenance Features – OCCS has a comprehensive web based graphical user interface for SNMP V2 Alarm, mail and SMS notifications for detecting fault and/or measure performance of the operator’s systems
  5. Load Balancing (active – active) – OCCS can be deployed in active-active configuration for efficient load balancing
  6. High Availability/Cluster Support – OCCS has active-standby support in case of system failure

Benefits

  1. Highly scalable architecture is capable of serving millions of subscribers per system instance, thus minimizing the operator’s CAPEX
  2. Highly flexible subscription engine helps operators promote customized tariffs based on granular market segmentation
  3. Increased personalized service usage for each subscriber results in enhanced customer loyalty
  4. Statistical analysis helps service providers to be agile and responsive when rolling out new services

Selected Customer Case Studies

An Indian Greenfield Operator Ensures Mobile Content Provisioning through Aricent’s Online Charging and Control System (OCCS) – The operator enhanced its CDMA network’s capability for content based charging. It now offers content based services to its subscribers by integrating with Aricent’s dedicated Online Charging and Control System(OCCS).