In response to the inquiry, "What Is an Online Charging System?" It may be summed up as a system that enables a communications service provider to bill clients in real-time according to service consumption. The OCS reduces technical and vendor reliance, cuts down on time-to-market for new services, and separates business functions to better optimise the system.

For carriers, the OCS performs billing and accounting tasks such as as collecting service information, rating, charging, promoting, controlling credit, invoicing, recharging, paying, and dunning. The solution enables a carrier to continuously manage every subscriber, independent of payment method, network type, or service type, on a single system. The OCS is the key component of an online (prepaid) billing system for a service provider. In this role, the OCS communicates with a variety of network nodes, such as MSC, SGSN, and PCEF, all of which may be able to give data related to billing. The maintenance of subscriber account balances, transaction control, charge-free guidance to external systems, and rating (calculating the units, such as time, volume, etc., in use and determining their price), are among the core ocs online charging system.

To stand out from the competition in the current mobile industry and achieve momentum with consumers, service providers must be able to effectively promote and deliver distinct service offers.  Talking SIP Mobility is planned and developed to deliver integrated and unique service options with a competitive edge in time-to-market, enabling mobile carriers to swiftly seize and take advantage of market possibilities.

Can Your Company Survive Without Online Payments?

The MVNA, MVNE, and MVNO continue to modify and improve their business models, wireless billing schemes, and networks as the mobile industry develops.  To remain competitive in the market, MVNOs must have the ability to bill their users based on prepaid mobile, shared mobile billing plans, and family plans in anticipation of the rise in mobile data consumption and the reduction in traditional phone communications.  Mobile carriers are emphasising the marketing of monthly data plans with specified thresholds that may be invoiced on a prepaid or postpaid basis. Voice and SMS are now included in the monthly billing and are quickly becoming "data" apps.

A sort of payment charging online system called an online charging system (OCS) enables businesses that offer communications services to start initiating charges for services provided in real-time. Depending on how the price matrix for the services offered is set up, a different procedure may be employed. Usually, the online billing system can start the charge as soon as the service session is over, utilising financial information on file with the provider, when the costs have to do with services evaluated on a per-minute/per-connection basis.

Consider how an Online charging system provider can cost a client for a conference call to get a sense of how an online pricing system works. When a conference call session ends, often when the phone line designated as the leader or moderator departs from the call and all other lines do as well, the procedure for this type of call accounting starts. At that moment, the provider's billing system downloads the conference call information from the conference bridge. There, the call consumption is graded by the tariff offered to that client, and the system generates an electronic invoice.

Upgrade to the OCS online charging system's next level.

With the OCS implementation, which supports a 5G convergent charging system (CCS) and 4G online and offline charging, Telenet is continuing a wider operation to move customers from acquisitions onto a single IT infrastructure. By combining several IT stacks and upgrading OCS, Telenet will be able to accelerate time to market, offer end users an omnichannel experience, and eventually lower IT TCO.

What kinds of usages can an OCS system process and bill for?

Different forms of telecom services, such as SMS, MMS, calls, mobile data, video, API calls, etc., may all be charged for via an OCS system. These usage patterns are either session- or event-based. For instance, SMS and MMS are more akin to events than active user sessions because they don't require them. On the other hand, calls or mobile data use requires an active user experience that might last anywhere from a few seconds and many hours.

To maintain the OCS system's scalability, it should be viable to continuously grow the network's subscriber base without endangering the network's response times. The network component significantly relies on the billing and pricing system to determine whether or not service consumption may go on.