Infozech -- Software for Telecom Service Providers Fax: 91-11- 6411455, Tel: 91-11-6414784; 91-11-6414785 in US Contact: 408-490-2840, 2090 Hillsdale Circle, Boulder, CO-80303 Microsoft Certified Solution Provider Visit us at http://www.infozech.com **************************** Telcomine: A Telecom & Technology Newsletter http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.html Telcomine ( http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.htm), a monthly newsletter from Infozech. Telcomine brings you the latest trends and developments in frontline IT Technologies. To subscribe send a mail to nl@infozech.com ....................................................................... *****TELCOMINE************ Wealth of Information about Telecommunications SPECIAL BILLING ISSUE Volume 10, October 1998 IN THIS ISSUE 1. Japanese Telecom Giant Refunds $7.3 Million for Inflated Phone Bills A glaring proof of what Telcomine has been telling its readers: Check and "reconcile" your phone bills before you pay them. 2. Harassed European Phone Users to Start Billing Service A major European user group is poised to launch a new service called "Billing for Business" to tackle the problem of unwieldy and inaccurate bills from service providers. 3. Large Savings in Phone Bills ( Wholesale Carrier reconciliation - II ) With the incoming multi-media explosion, as the long distance services becomes more complex, billing calculations would be equally complicated. We carry on from the September issue to discuss ways to identify errors in phone bills and resolve them. 4. Electronic Billing Saves A Fortune Providers of the stature of AT&T , Ameritech, Bellsouth, GTE, Sprint and Worldcom to save $180 million from electronic billing in the year 2000. (Look out for details in November Telcomine) 5. Software Overload Scares Users Increasingly frustrated with the ballooning size of applications and operating systems corporate users are protesting to major software players like Microsoft, Lotus and Corel Corporation. 6. Taiwan Firm Unleashes Crippling Windows Virus20 A fast spreading windows virus that has crippled hundreds of computers around the world has been contained, according to anti-virus researchers. 7. Free CD-Quality Tunes Available on the Net A new technology called MP3 allows you to squeeze CD-quality music down to less than a tenth of its digital size - small enough to send to anyone online - while retaining all of its lovely sound. 8. Racing for the $650 Billion Pie Who will dominate the $650 Billion Telecom Infrastructure market in the years to come (See in next month's Telcomine) 9. Our Mailbox A. MORE ON VOICE PAD While the 10 yr. old is entitled to his opinion, the situation is not as bad as made out in your August issue. B. Telcomine replies to A query on Ebill modules prices 10. Ebill : A Billing Solution For Telecom Services For more details please visit http://www.infozech.com/ebill.htm ******************************************************************** Japanese Telecom Giant Refunds $7.3 Million for Inflated Phone Bills ******************************************************************** Here is a glaring proof of what Telcomine has been telling its readers: Check and "reconcile" your phone bills before you pay them. Even the biggest and the best companies make mistakes and some of them routinely. Japan's largest cellular phone operator, NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc (NTT DoCoMo), said it had overcharged its users because of a software glitch and will repay them as much as 1 billion yen ( $ 7.3 million). The company failed to update software to reflect a June rate cut in three areas of Greater Tokyo. The error was corrected in two of them, but local units did not inform company headquarters until September. More than 40 million calls made through DoCoMo Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. To DoCoMo phones were affected. As many as 7.6 million users placed the calls. The company will reimburse affected users by reducing their monthly fixed-line telephone bills. NTT DoCoMo and its regional units serve almost 60 percent of Japan's 35 million cell users.20 ******************************************************* Harassed European Phone Users to Start Billing Service ******************************************************* A major European user group is poised to launch a new service called "Billing for Business" to tackle the problem of unwieldy and inaccurate bills from service providers. "This is one of the few industries where customers pay a bill without understanding what they're paying for," says Paul Fegan, director of Telecommunications Manager Association's billing special interest group. "What we need is a change of attitude from suppliers. The bill is a product and you should be able to choose it at point of purchase." These poorly-designed, unwieldy and inaccurate bills have continued to plague corporates, which are calling for industry-led standards in the absence of regulatory intervention. High on customers' lists of demands is the ability to compare different carriers' billing and discount schemes. Through their "Billing for Business" service, TMA plans to address this need.20 They are coming out with a Web-based billing service analyzer. Organizations using it will be able to input their needs - such as multi-center, multi-currency billing - and receive a graded list of carriers meeting their requirements. ******************************************************************** Large Savings in Phone Bills (Wholesale Carrier Reconciliation - II) ******************************************************************** Your phone bills need watching, not just the calls you make. As we explained in the last issue, about 80 percent of our commercial telephone bills are incorrect.20 With the incoming multi-media explosion, as the service becomes more complex, billing calculations would be equally complicated. The customer has no choice but to deploy his own "reconciliation system" to save himself from being overcharged.20 Few major customers can do without this service and the savings can be high indeed! Various issues relating to large scale faulty billing were discussed at the recent "Billing 98" conference held in Atlanta, Georgia.20 This article is based in part on a speech by the author at the conference on "Meeting the Challenges of Wholesale Carrier Reconciliation" and also on a keynote article by him in the September issue of the prestigious magazine "Billing World". The September issue of Telcomine brought to light some causes of billing errors. This month we discuss ways to identify and resolve them. THE FIRST RULE The first rule is to remember that errors can crop up in the least suspected places. If we assume that since the rate applied for 5 calls from US to Japan is correct that would mean the rest is without errors, we are deceiving ourselves. This does not happen in reality. Let us take a look into how we can perform an audit of Telecom services: The first step is to look at gross usage in the physical bills and allocate it to major services. These could be direct dial, tollfree, callback etc. Next we look at billing data (in electronic format) for the same period and ensure it corresponds to the physical invoices. This helps us link the physical bills with those available electronically. This stage of physical inspection of bills also lets us review amounts actually transacted between the customer and carrier -- review issues like overdue payments, finance charges, discounts and taxation. Here we also review monthly re-occurring fees & inventory of services used. BULK USE ERRORS The next step is to look at areas of maximum usage. This could be long-distance use between two offices or use of 800 numbers etc. We then segregate these calls and establish the rating criteria. Rating criteria depends on source & destination locations, type of service used, time of the day, volume of usage, discount levels or any other reason depending on the contract. Once the rating criteria has been determined, we re-rate selective call records and compare them against rates charged by the carrier. For rerating call records we need: * An updated database of rates * Database of location codes * Carrier CDRs * Updated Contract information The updated rates database would record effective date and rates for each destination. This database needs to be maintained for the time period when the call is made. Additionally one may need to separate out rates based on the type of service used. For instance, calling cards are billed at a different rate than the regular direct dial calls. The 800 calls have yet another rate. Maintaining updated rates (which may change) at a weekly level is a tedious but indispensable task. We separate calls which do not fall in a pattern and analyze possible reasons for the deviations. When we are sure that there are calls which have been over- billed, we set them up separately and request a credit for it from the carriers. During our analysis we look for application of incorrect rates, identification of wrong destinations etc. We also look for calls to invalid destination numbers or Directory Assistance calls, which came within the free allowance. SPECIAL CONTRACT ERRORS At the time of setting up contracts, telecommunication managers negotiate several discounts and freebies to save money. However to ensure that the carrier has actually applied these saving them money is a totally different story. We need to uncover each clause of the contract and annexures to ensure the bills are in tandem to what was originally agreed. Managers are often unaware of the inventory of services subscribed or even rates of each of the service. For instance the person knew the US-Japan rate for direct dial but was unaware of the rate for 800 No. calls from Japan or what was the charge to call on the calling card. The customer never thought of trying to get a better rate for the services. A complete analysis of our findings showed overcharges of about 10 percent.20 -Ankur Lal(concluded) For more information and help in your billing problems contact Infozech. e-mail seema@infozech.com ************************************ Electronic Billing Saves A Fortune ************************************ Providers of the stature of AT&T , Ameritech, BellSouth, GTE, Sprint and Worldcom will save $180 million from electronic billing in the year 2000. Look out for details in November Telcomine ******************************* Software Overload Scares Users ****************************** Increasingly frustrated with the ballooning size of applications and operating systems corporate users are protesting to major software players like Microsoft, Lotus and Corel Corporation.20 Huge applications which eat up disk and server space are making the lives of corporate users difficult. Complaints vary between increased20 strain on hardware and budget, to upgrading to a newer version each time. Quite unhappy, they are taking their troubles straight to the vendors, but sporadic relief is all they are getting so far.20 "My problem is I'm forced to upgrade all the time -- not for functionally I want, but for features someone [at Microsoft] wanted for me." says Roger Walter, chief information officer at Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc.. He apparently visited Microsoft to explain why he didn't want huge operating system software, but the company didn't seem to listen. According to him, Microsoft is working in the best interests of Microsoft and they don't listen to users. Microsoft's stand in this is that the company is giving users what they want -- more and more features. Microsoft's Windows 98 and Office 97 are code-heavy compared with earlier versions, which weren't exactly light.20 However Lotus and Corel, which chase Microsoft in the office software market have heard similar complaints from users regarding bloating software and both companies are answering the call. ********************************************** Taiwan Firm Unleashes Crippling Windows Virus20 ********************************************** A Taiwan based device driver manufacturer has unleashed on the Web a fast spreading windows virus that has crippled hundreds of computers around the world. Called Win 95.CIH, it triggers itself on the 26th day of every month. Once resident in a computers memory, the virus quickly spreads to any executable file that is opened, copied, or accessed in any other way. It is also programmed to overwrite the first megabyte of data on each hard drive connected to the infected computer. Once triggered, it tries to overwrite part of the code stored on the system's Flash BIOSchip, the PC component that tells the computer how to start itself. A successful attack on this chip's code will render a machine unable to boot. Virus researchers claim to have found at least four variants of the virus. However, anti-virus researchers have reported that the spread of this virus has been brought under control with attacks being few in the month of September. ****************************************** Free CD-Quality Tunes Available on the Net ****************************************** A new technology called MP3 allows you to squeeze CD-quality music down to less than a tenth of its digital size - small enough to send to anyone online - while retaining all of its lovely sound. Some 3 million people have already downloaded MP3 players usually free from sites such as www.winamp.com and countless search engines like mp3search.com are devoted to finding the vast archives of MP3 music that exist online. However, there is a danger that this technology might spell doom for the recording industry. Besides dishing out good quality music, a lot of the MP3-encoded music that exists online is on underground "pirate" sites, which specialize in the illegal practice of giving away copyright music. Though it is technically illegal to download copyright music, the prohibition is very difficult to enforce. The recording industry does employs an army to root out these pirate sites but it is a tough job - Many archives of MP3 music spring up for only days or hours at a time. ********************************* Racing for the $650 Billion Pie ********************************* Who will dominate the $650 Billion Telecom Infrastructure market in the years to come ? See next month's Telcomine20 ************* Our Mailbox ************ 1. MORE ON "VOICE PAD" While the 10 yr. old is entitled to his opinion, the situation is not as bad as made out in your August issue. "Phillips Free Speech" has an extensive training session where the intonation and the sound as spoken is cast into the memory of the program. I do not have an American accent and the recognition rate is as good as 90% after a training session of only 35 minutes. The situation with the current version of "Microsoft Speech Recognition Suite" appears to be pretty good too going by the fact that it recognized the Indian accent without any problem. - Anoop Singh Negi, India 2. Your "cut down" newsletter seems great as a way to introduce subjects, but you really need more details at least on your web site - not just the cut down copy. - Peter Morgan, U.K 3. I have always enjoyed reading your bulletins and often admired the professionalism of the publishers. I have a particular interest in ebill for our business and would like to know the cost of the various modules. Please give me more info on your article on "Email on Phone".- M.Kehinde Ebill pricing starts at $5,500. The article on "Email on Phone" features products from Planetary Motion. For details please pay a visit to the Planetary Motions Website at http://www.planetarymotion.com - Editor *********************************************** Ebill : A Billing Solution For Telecom Services *********************************************** Details can be found at http://www.infozech.com/ebill.htm ************************* Readers are invited to send comments on specific articles at Telcomine@infozech.com If you have found Telcomine useful, please consider telling somebody else about it . E-mail: Telcomine@infozech.com Fax: 408-490-2840; Voice Mail: 408-490-2842 Visit us at http://www.infozech.com