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IMS / 3GPP
What is IMS?
IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is a set of standards under development by the standards consortium called 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in partnership with a number of other standards bodies. IMS provides the signaling, delivery, and billing functions necessary for real-time, packet-based calls and services across virtually any underlying network technology—that is, for efficient and rapid implementation of next-generation IP services in both fixed and mobile networks.
Adoption of IMS today will provide a “thin OSS” layer for rapid roll-out of IP services and bundled services across all types of underlying networks and will accelerate the convergence of fixed and wireless networks. A common description of a driving vision behind IMS is the focus on giving the subscriber consistent, converged services in his daily life—“one handset device, one address book, one email address, and one bill” from all his service sessions across all networks (traditional telephony and Internet over all wireline and wireless transports).
Why Does It Matter?
Communication service providers have been concerned with avoiding the fate of becoming “dumb pipes” for Internet services since the beginnings of the Internet revolution. IP networking technologies are the backbone transport layer towards which all service providers are moving for reasons of cost efficiency and service flexibility. Monetizing IP-enabled services is the cornerstone to high-growth strategies for all service providers today.
IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) has emerged as the unifying standards-based framework for creating a flexible OSS/BSS for next-generation IP services. IMS is designed to enable full control and leverage over flexible IP service offerings. IMS offers the path towards a single unified service delivery framework for both fixed and mobile networks. This vision of a single OSS/BSS along with IMS’s design emphasis on enabling easy and rapid deployment of new IP-based services means the success of IMS will be a tremendous accelerator for service providers worldwide.
The market is validating IMS in a very strong fashion. Almost all major telecommunications carriers have IMS trials and nascent deployments in progress. With the dual appeal of more efficient BSS/OSS operations and the power to roll-out new IP services quickly, IMS is proving to be the way forward. IMS will be the cash register over IP for traditional communications carriers.
Real-time Charging in the IMS Architecture — A Crucial Element for Realizing the Promise of IMS
Whatever the precise adoption path of IMS, IMS and many other communication trends clearly point to an explosion of next-generation IP services being rolled out in the next few years by communication providers. The marketplace simply will not allow providers to step back from a rapid expansion of new services and service bundles that leverage the flexibility and economics of IP (packet-based) networking.
Next-generation IP service roll-outs—and the dynamic business models that they will bring—demand a drastic reconsideration of the current OSS/BSS software models. The inflexibility and speed of adaptations in many current system designs will simply not hold up in this new era. Nowhere is the imperative for new approaches more evident than in the flexibility and capability for charging and billing infrastructure. Figure 1 shows the high-level architecture of an Online Charging System as specified in the IMS standards [from 3GPP document TS 32.296 V6.2.0]. This architecture calls for an Online Charging Function to manage interactions with network-level session control, in conjunction with a Rating Function and Account Balance Manager, to implement real-time authorization and charging for IP flows in the network. Traditional collect-and-bill mediation events go through a Charging Gateway Function and are passed to back-office billing systems.
The challenges here are daunting---the OCS elements must handle very high volumes of diverse IP sessions in real-time. In particular, the Rating Function and Account Balance Manager must have the flexibility to implement the charging logic behind *any* IP service or service bundles with carrier-grade reliability and robustness. Building solutions for these modules within the OCS will be very challenging. And, if this charging infrastructure chosen for an IMS solution comes up short in capability or flexibility or scaleability, then the huge investments in all-IP networking that a carrier has made to get into the IMS world will be severely compromised.
RateIntegration’s IMS Modules—How to meet the Imperative for Extremely Adaptable Real-time Pricing and Charging
What an IMS world demands is an Online Charging Server capable of –
- Supporting pricing and rating for any service or service bundle—No one can predict what new services or service bundles will be adopted in this IMS-accelerated world. Further, competitive pressures demand that any new successful offering be matched quickly by competitors. In all cases, providing innovative pricing and rating will be critical.
- Reconfiguration that is extremely quick, easy, and cheap in order to support a continual stream of new service roll-outs—IMS is all about enabling providers to capitalize on the myriad possibilities of IP services. The pricing, charging, and billing elements within an IMS framework must support appropriate and diverse models for capitalizing on these new services.
- Real-time policy-driven pricing, charging, and rating in very demanding environments—As these next-generation IP services become richer and customer expectations around real-time services (location, presence, context-specific delivery) rise, the demand for high-scale real-time processing explodes. Policy-driven pricing and resource management is the heart of monetizing IP services, and the simple mechanisms in current networks will be very limiting for the envisioned services of tomorrow. Meeting these performance and flexibility challenges will be difficult and certainly many older charging and rating solutions will quickly run out of gas in such an environment.
- Flexible account balance management for the creation and management of all possible “wallets” and wallet hierarchies needed to implement new services.
In conjunction with our network-facing partners, RateIntegration delivers a full OCS solution with our industry-leading PriceMaker Pricing Engine at the heart of the solution. Figure 2 shows the architecture of our solution with the RateIntegration-supplied components colored blue.
PriceMaker — An IMS-Grade Pricing and Rating Solution Available Now
RateIntegration’s PriceMaker Enterprise Pricing Server along with its Balance Management module is the only modular IMS-ready pricing and rating solution today. PriceMaker is unparalleled in its ability to deliver highly flexible pricing, charging, and rating for any IP service bundles and do so in conjunction with existing infrastructure. Why?
- Proven flexibility for any service scenarios — PriceMaker is used today to address pricing and rating functions across many communications business models and for a wide-array of communications services. The PriceMaker Server is truly service-neutral in the strongest possible sense — it has no underlying native data model to bias processing, but instead is designed to source whatever data is required from external existing systems. No other product in the marketplace today has this design.
- Proven ability to stand up under continual changes — PriceMaker is a highly configurable engine with easy rules authoring. Its innovative design has resulted in break-through ROI for carriers deploying business rules around very dynamic requirements. Internal communication carrier groups and ASP customers have found PriceMaker dramatically reduces the amount of time and effort (thus cost) needed to service change requests to the pricing policies underlying their businesses. No other product in the marketplace today can match PriceMaker’s track-record to-date.
- Proven real-time rating engine capable of scaling to Tier 1 performance—PriceMaker has been deployed in Tier 1 environments and shown extraordinary robustness and durability in production environments. High flexibility and high performance are extremely challenging to engineer within the same software server---PriceMaker has proven credentials in showing that its innovative architecture and long-term engineering investments have taken it to the level of a Tier 1 production real-time charging and rating engine.
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