Experience Monetizing Usage-Driven Services
Usage billing is only as good as the usage data behind it. We have spent 14+ years rating calls, sessions, streams and compute, and more than 10 billion records have gone through our rating engine.
The short version
EarnBill has run usage-based billing in production for telecom operators, a B2B telecom VAS provider (50K CDRs a day, 80% less billing operations work), an internet radio hosting provider with 400+ stations, a US cloud IaaS provider operating in 12 countries and a business communications company with 20+ brands on one instance. Across these deployments the platform has rated more than 10 billion usage records.
Usage billing we run in production
B2B telecom VAS: multi-line mobile app
A US provider gives businesses a second work number on their employees' existing phones. We bill 5K business subscribers across 3 sub-entities in the US, UK and Singapore, processing about 50K CDRs a day. Carrier origination and termination charges pass through at cost, with the option to add margin later, and number counts are prorated by the days each number was active. Automating this cut billing operations work by 80%. Read the case study.
Internet radio streaming
A hosting provider for 400+ radio stations bills on usage records rather than call records, with tiered pricing on upstream and downstream traffic. Read the case study.
Cloud IaaS, 12 countries
A US cloud provider needed billing and revenue assurance across 12 countries, with multi-level reconciliation and cost and margin tracked side by side. Read the case study.
Business communications, 20+ brands
Answering services, business phone systems and collaboration apps, sold by more than 20 brands in several countries. Calls answered by live agents are mediated centrally, then rated and invoiced brand by brand, with included minutes and tiered usage tables printed on the invoice. The system has been in production for over 8 years. Read the case study.
Telecom operators
Our telecom work is usage billing at its heaviest: one Australian MVNO alone generates about 10 million CDRs a day. See the telecom delivery record.
Hybrid subscription and usage, not one or the other
Almost none of these customers bill on usage alone. The radio host prices traffic in tiers. The communications company sells bundles with included minutes and overage. The multi-line app mixes a prorated per-number subscription with pass-through usage. A usage billing platform has to price all of that in one catalog and show the working on one invoice, or support teams spend their month explaining bills.
What this work taught us
- Rate from clean data or not at all. Duplicates, late records and missing fields are normal. Mediation should catch them before rating, not after the invoice has gone out.
- Keep cost and price apart. For the multi-line app, carrier cost records are processed separately from billable usage, so the client can check carrier bills and set margins independently.
- Show customers the math. Tiered pricing and included allowances generate disputes unless the invoice shows usage summaries and the tiers that applied.
- Expect prices to change mid-cycle. New carrier rates, tax changes and plan changes land whenever they land. Rating has to apply them from the right date without reprocessing the whole month by hand.
Questions operators ask us
What is usage-based billing?
Usage-based billing charges customers for what they actually consume, such as minutes, sessions, data, streams or compute, instead of, or on top of, a flat subscription fee. See metered and usage billing.
What kinds of usage has EarnBill billed in production?
Telecom CDRs for voice, SMS and data, B2B mobile app calls with carrier origination and termination charges, radio streaming traffic, cloud infrastructure usage and live-agent call handling across 20+ brands.
Can EarnBill combine subscriptions and usage in one plan?
Yes. Most of our customers do, with recurring fees, included allowances, tiered usage and prorated changes priced from one product catalog and shown on one invoice.
Keep reading
Billing on usage, or about to?
Talk to a team that has rated more than 10 billion records in production.
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