TBR ISSUE - 4 JANUARY 2011 the Editorial Board of the Telecom Business Review
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ISSN 0973-9114 Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead 3 Pavan Pachimatla & Bhanu Garg IT Disaster Recovery Planning 16 Amol Tode & Hemant Gavali Near Field Communication on Mobile- 33 The Next Generation Mobile Transactions Sunil Jogi & Giten Kulkarni Mobile Unified Communications and Challenges 46 K. Swayam Prabha. Managed Services: Analyzing Strategic Potential 53 in Emerging market Shahid Shaikh & Vikram Singh Mains The Evolving Handset Market in India: A study 62 of facts with reference to tier 2 & 3 cities Mr. Anuj Sidharth & Maruti Nandan Tripathi Self Care: Unleashing the Power of Superior 69 Customer Service Gaurav Patil, Aditya Chavan & Noopur Rangera Monetizing the convergence of Social Networking, 81 Mobile Phones & Location Based Services Sohag Sarkar Customer Acquisition Form Management & 94 Subscriber Verification Prashant Kislaya Outsourcing in Telecom Industry: The Road Ahead 100 Nagalakshmi S Billing for VoIP Services 112 Rahul Wargad An Overview of the Financial and Economic Impact 121 of 3G Auction in India, on the Union Budget, Telecom operators and the Indian economy Mr. A.V.Chirputkar & Mr. Prasanna Kulkarni Abstracts 134 TBR ISSUE - 4 JANUARY 2011 The Editorial board of the Telecom Business Review Chairman: Mr. Sunil Patil Director, Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management, Pune Esteemed Members of the Editorial board: Dr. P.J. Joglekar, Telecom Consultant & Former Professor, IIT Delhi Dr. (Mrs) M.Sukhapure, Faculty in the field of Retail Management Editorial board gratefully acknowledges the contribution of : Mr. Sharad Vaze, Chartered Accountant Dr. Rajas Parchure Director, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. Secretary of the Editorial board: Mr. Giri Hallur Asst. Professor (Telecom) SITM, Pune. Editorial Disclaimer : 1. Views expressed by contributors are not necessarily views of TBR. 2. Reasonable efforts are made by the TBR to ensure that papers published do not contain plagiarized material. The ultimate onus for ensuring that no plagiarizm has been resorted to however rests with the authors. 3. Articles published in the TBR should not be reproduced/reprinted in any form, either in full or part, without prior written permission from the Director, SITM. TBR is authorised to market the contents of the journal through re-license or sale of information products using any media (traditional or electronic) or formats presently known or hereafter discovered. Permission to make digital/hard copy of published work is granted without fee for personal or classroom use. Published by the Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM), Pune-411042 Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM), Pune-411042 Phones : +91 20 39116170, 39116180, 39116176 From the Director's desk. It gives me great pleasure in presenting to you the fourth issue of Telecom Business Review (TBR). The TBR has been a platform for scholars, teachers, professionals & students to contribute & showcase their knowledge, research, experience, study results & findings in the relevant areas of Technology & Business Management. In the 2010 issue of TBR we published articles on diverse topics like 3G spectrum auctions, MVAS, OSS/BSS, Low Utilisation Towns and MNP. I am sure that this year's issue of the TBR will also help to trigger quality studies in field of telecom business management and enlighten and educate the telecom fraternity. At the release of the fourth issue I thank all the contributors for their thought provoking articles. I also express my heartfelt gratitude to the members of the editorial board and all our esteemed reviewers. Through this publication I would like to invite more participation from the telecom fraternity in an effort to make the TBR global by contributing research papers that highlight global issues in telecom business. Sunil Patil Director, SITM SITM TBR Issue-4,January 2011 ISSN 0973-9114 1 Contents . 1. Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead 3 Pavan Pachimatla & Bhanu Garg 2. IT Disaster Recovery Planning 16 Amol Tode & Hemant Gavali 3. Near Field Communication on Mobile- 33 The Next Generation Mobile Transactions Sunil Jogi & Giten Kulkarni 4. Mobile Unified Communications and Challenges 46 K. Swayam Prabha 5. Managed Services: Analyzing Strategic Potential in Emerging market 53 Shahid Shaikh & Vikram Singh Mains 6. The Evolving Handset Market in India: A study of facts with reference to 62 tier 2 & 3 cities Mr. Anuj Sidharth & Maruti Nandan Tripathi 7. Self Care: Unleashing the Power of Superior Customer Service 69 Gaurav Patil, Aditya Chavan & Noopur Rangera 8. Monetizing the convergence of Social Networking, Mobile Phones 81 & Location Based Services Sohag Sarkar 9. Customer Acquisition Form Management & Subscriber Verification 94 Prashant Kislaya 10.Outsourcing in Telecom Industry: The Road Ahead 100 Nagalakshmi S 11.Billing for VoIP Services 112 Rahul Wargad 12.An Overview of the Financial and Economic Impact of 3G Auction in 121 India, on the Union Budget, Telecom operators and the Indian economy Mr. A.V.Chirputkar & Mr. Prasanna Kulkarni 13.Abstracts 134 SITM TBR Issue-4,January 2011 ISSN 0973-9114 2 Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead By: Pavan Pachimatla 2nd year MBA- TM student Marketing &Finance, 2009-2011 batch, SITM [email protected] And Bhanu Garg 2nd year MBA- TM student Marketing &Finance, 2009-2011 batch, SITM [email protected] Abstract: Billing is just sending an invoice and collecting the payment. But the amount of work carried in the backdrop is stupendous. An efficient network infrastructure and good system integration is required to deploy an effective billing operations support system. The conventional bifurcation of mere prepaid and postpaid systems is a legacy now. A convergent solution should be capable of providing high- performance methods for any combination of payment methods and technologies utilized. Convergent Billing is a one-stop shop for multiple services and customers anticipate a single bill for all the services they use from a single service provider. In addition, a converged bill has the leverage of cross service discounting. Operators today are pushing hard to move towards a converged platform. Most of the operators in India claim that their systems are ready to provide convergent solutions. However, today, different services are bundled together to be disguised as a Converged Solution, which in fact is not the case. This paper aims to highlight details on the • Evolution of the concept of Convergent Billing • Significance of Convergent Billing from different view points • Principles involved in the concept of Convergent Billing At the best, the roadmap for a converged platform with respect to the Indian Telecom Industry would be highlighted vis-à-vis the Global Telecom Industry. Introduction: Telecom Convergent Charging and Billing (also known as convergent charging, converged charging and convergent billing), is a solution in the telecommunications industry that enables common management of all users and all services for operators. It includes convergence of payment methods like SITM TBR Issue-4,January 2011 ISSN 0973-9114 3 Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead prepaid and postpaid, as well as access methods and services like fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband and TV. Need for convergence: 1. Network Migration The Next-Generation Network Today’s Separate Networks Migration Mutli-Service Network Distributed Software Signaling Controller Network Broadband Access Wireless Data Network Network Wireline Voice Network Packet Core ISP Access Wireless Wireline Access Access Figure 1: Network Migration 2. Demand for Services: services FIXED NETWORK IP NETWORKS Switch vendor A WIRELESS NETWORK Switch vendor E Switch vendor B Switch vendor C Switch vendor F Switch4 vendor D Figure 2: Service Convergence SITM TBR Issue-4,January 2011 ISSN 0973-9114 4 Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead 3. Device Convergence: Figure 3: Device Convergence The concept of Convergent Billing is designed in such a manner so as to provide convergent support to each of the technologies shown below. Any of these services can be assigned to any one given account. Account GSM Access Contract 1 Data CDMA Content Centrex Access Contract 2 VoIP POTS Paging CATV Reseller IPTV Periodic Periodic Internet Bill 1 Bill 2 Figure 4: Technology Convergence and Billing SITM TBR Issue-4,January 2011 ISSN 0973-9114 5 Convergent Billing-The Roadmap Ahead In addition to accommodating to a broad range of features and functions, true convergent services support means 'Converging with no restrictions' on how such services are grouped or billed. 3. Basic Functionality of Billing Systems: Billing systems collect, rate, and calculate charges for the use of telecommunication services. The figure given below presents a simplistic view of a billing flow. CALL IS MADE SWITCH CALL DATA IS DATA STORED IN CUSTOMER CALL RATED FOR OTHER CHARGES & COLLECTED DATABASE BILLING CREDIT ADDED INVOICE ARE BILLING IS PRODUCED RUN INVOICE ARE MAILED Figure 5: Billing Flow The typical billing process involves collecting usage information from network equipment (such as switches), formatting the usage information into records that a billing system can understand, transferring these records to a Rating Engine, that assigns charges to each record, receiving and recording payments from the customers, and creating invoices. The customer sends his payment to the telecom service provider. Payments are recorded (posted) in the financial system. Customer's bills are archived