Madrid: Meshing Operations, Marketing and RA

Yet another topic our training group spent hours talking about is 3G and GPRS. There is a lot of confusion surrounding these technologies. Carriers in North America are already claiming they are 4G—surprising because when done properly, full implementation of 3G can take years. There are also carriers who claim to be 3.5G and 3.75G. Claims like these make it difficult to determine how a technology is implemented and used, not least because of the sharp contrast with how it is marketed. This makes formulating a revenue assurance strategy challenging at best.

Often the network operations department does not tell the revenue assurance department what it is doing, and then marketing people start making claims that do not necessarily reflect the reality of the technology. In this gap between “creative” marketing and opaque operations, the revenue assurance staff gets left behind. The revenue assurance staff cannot be sure they are doing the right job of assuring billing systems when they are not kept abreast of the changes.

For example, two years ago, carriers swore they would not do CAMEL or pre-paid roaming because it was too expensive and technically infeasible. Now the majority of telecommunications companies use CAMEL. Because the shift occurred so quickly, the billing and assurance on this new system is extremely lax—creating a great deal of revenue risk. And when looking at 3G, the exposure is many times greater even than with CAMEL. It is hard to keep your finger on what is happening because it usually happens in the back room. Regardless it is clear that what gets laid out in published standards is not what is actually happening. This always leaves revenue assurance staff in a wait, see, then scramble situation.