MVNO Billing System

MVNO Billing System from EarnBill allows MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) to deal with tracking and charging of mobile plans or subscriptions as well as the usage billing related to the various mobile services, such as national and international calls, SMS, MMS, Mobile Data usage, international roaming, and more.

As it would be expected, an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) will have tie ups with the National Carriers as well as the International Carriers. The carriers are referred to as MNOs (or Mobile Network Operators) in the diagram. The MNO1 and MNO2 are shown as national carriers and they would provide the network infrastructure for the MVNO’s services to work. The MNO3 and MNO4 are the international carriers which provide coverage for international roaming for Zone 1 and Zone 2 countries respectively.

The usage feed of CDRs is transferred from the MNOs (both national and international) to the MVNO in the form of CDR files. This usage feed is pushed to EarnBill’s MVNO Billing System. Here the usage is rated using EarnBill’s Billing Mediation module. The rating engine uses the Plans, Bundles and Rate Cards from the Product Catalogue to rate and charge the usage accurately. The MNO rate cards as received from the carriers can be uploaded into EarnBill’s Product Catalogue to create the rate cards specific to each MNO.

EarnBill’s Invoicing and Payment Collection processes ensure effective billing and auto payment processing of the customers. EarnBill integrates with the CRM system to ensure that all the latest invoices and payments are updated and available into the CRM system. This helps the Customer Support department to take the complaint calls from customers and sort them out effectively.

The Sales Agents who work at front desks onboard new customers and sell new subscriptions via the CRM system. The integration between the CRM and EarnBill ensures that the subscription is captured in the MVNO billing system and used for processing the invoices as per the billing cycle defined during the customer onboarding.

The customer self service portal integrates with the CRM system and effectively provides the data required by the online end consumer to effectively manage their various subscriptions and accounts. Typically the MVNO will support the use cases like viewing of invoices, payments, subscriptions from the customer self service portal. It will also allow paying the unpaid invoices from the self service portal.

The two most important areas where the MVNO and the MNO systems integrate are Network Provisioning and CDR processing (or billing mediation aka usage billing).

EarnBill’s network provisioning activates or deactivates services on the carrier network when the new plans or subscriptions are sold by the MVNO or when the cancellations take place. The MVNO sells a SIM card as part of its mobile plan and the SIM must be activated on the underlying carrier’s network in order for the mobile service to get activated. Similarly, in case of cancellation of a service, the SIM must be deactivated on the carrier’s network.

The CDR feed is provided by the carrier / MNO to the MVNO on a daily basis. Some of the usage files can be shared on hourly basis for the postpaid charging. For mobile data usage notifications (or SMS alerts), some files could be shared every 10 to 15 minutes. This allows MVNO to comply with the telecom regulations to alert customers about their mobile data usage in a timely fashion. EarnBill provides an effective framework for sending SMS alerts to users about their mobile data usage levels.

The CDRs provided by the carrier can also be used to validate the billing from MNO to the MVNO. EarnBill has an effective built in feature that allows to validate the cost of usage charges incurred by the MVNO for using the MNO’s services.

• Product Catalogue

The products and plans have to mirror the offerings of the underlying MNOs or Carriers. EarnBill allows innovative pricing that can improve margins and revenue for the MVNO. The pricing needs to be simple for the end consumers to understand.

• Rate Cards

An MVNO billing system needs an effective mechanism to maintain complex rate cards provided by the carriers or the MNOs. EarnBill offers rate card customisation and upload of the carriers’ rate cards, allowing management of price changes from the carriers from time to time very easily. This ensures there is no revenue leakage and price changes being applied in quick time and on short notice.

• Customised Pricing

EarnBill is a customisable billing system allowing support for customised, complex pricing support in usage billing.

➡️ Working with Multiple Carriers

EarnBill’s Billing Mediation feature is fully capable of handling CDR Processing feeds coming from multiple carriers. There could be some little custom formats to deal with during the implementation stage but this is minimal work with the framework and structure for customisation already in place.

➡️ Handling feeds for different services

The usage billing needs to cater to CDR feeds from different services such as the mobile data, international roaming and regular CDR files. EarnBill is a fully expandable MVNO billing system that can process multiple CDR processing jobs in parallel and provide good scalability for rating and charging a huge number of CDRs continuously, 24×7.

➡️ Validating Carrier Costs

EarnBill provides the ability to process the CDR files to calculate the costs incurred by the MVNO and payable to the carrier or MNO. The same set of CDRs can also be processed to calculate and charge the usage charges to end customers. Thus, the same feature supports calculating the revenue as well as the costs for the mobile service usage.

EarnBill allows MVNOs to use both Prepaid Billing or Postpaid Billing or employ both types of plans under a Convergent Billing System.

➡️ Getting a Converged Account Statement

This section explains how EarnBill produces a converged statement for different types of services, whether prepaid, postpaid or both of them offered together to the same account.

MVNO specific financial reports can be quite different. EarnBill allows tracking revenue under different heads by attaching GL codes (General Ledger codes) under the Product Catalogue to Products, Bundles and Plans. The revenue reports can be generated online in some cases and as part of batch jobs for more complex ones.

➡️ Revenue Reports

EarnBill provides different variants of revenue reports in summary and detail format, including revenue reported to GLs, costs incurred for usage charges, unearned and unbilled revenue etc.

• Tracking Usage Margins

EarnBill allows an MVNO to make sure they operate in sync with business decisions with respect to operating margins for usage charges. An MVNO is paying bills to carriers for using their network. All the calls and usage gets tracked from the carrier and CDR files are used to charge the MVNO. EarnBill’s rate cards, pricing models and features such as mediation rating and increment management allows MVNO to ensure they have fine control over their operating margins.

For example, an MVNO at the time of launch may make a business decision to launch the services with no margin on usage charges and make its revenue only from the plan fees. However, with ease of configuration over margin, they can slowly revise their prices and rate cards to their customers so that they can make margins on usage charges with passage of time.

EarnBill allows an MVNO a fine control over its billing operations, puts it in command with the features like the product catalogue, billing mediation, online charging system, network provisioning and financial reporting. It allows MVNO to go for smoother launch of its services and ensure business stability. Its enterprise billing features make it an ideal partner for growing businesses.