In today’s competitive environment, mobile network operators need to offer various monthly Advance Pay and traditional Prepaid that appeal to different Usage-based demographics, whether the subscriber is in the high-usage group and requires an Unlimited plan, or whether the subscriber is in a lower usage group requiring longer expiration dates and simple usage based rating. Then there are those subscribers along the continuum between these two groups of users that may require monthly packages which may include limited voice (Local, LD, Roaming), SMS/MMS, and Data buckets.
Primal Technologies Advance Pay/Prepaid and OCS allows a mobile network operator (or
MVNO) to offer plans to subscribers that effectively target users along this same continuum with a
range of usage-based as well as monthly/weekly/daily plans to many different kinds of subscribers. The
advantage of the Primal Prepaid/OCS is that MNOs can charge upfront for various monthly plans, or
usage-based plans but also offer the flexibility to the subscriber who wishes to purchase bucket
“add-ons” for a specific period of time (e.g. 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, etc) via USSD, SMS, IVR, WWW
Responsive Self-Care, REST API as they require.
Since all rating and charging is performed in real-time and since all subscription, and topups are completely electronic and automated, Primal Prepaid/OCS typically has a much lower cost of ownership for the Mobile Network Operator compared to many postpaid offerings requiring a monthly cost per subscriber for each billing cycle. However, Primal can also provide the MNO with monthly billing statements that they can provide to the subscriber for convenient download similar to traditional postpaid billing systems.
Primal Technologies’ OSE Prepaid/OCS Service architecture not only supports the Charging APIs and Rate plans solely offered by many OCS vendors, but rather we also support the many required and often overlooked network call/data control interfaces including CAMEL, DIAMETER Gy, Sy and Ro (SMSC, MMS, VoLTE TAS – available since 2018). In 2020, we announced availability of the Primal CHF supporting the 5G Nchf interface for a Kubernetes containerized cluster architecture for 5G Standalone Network operators.
Where required, the flexibility of the OSE architecture allows multiple different call control mechanisms to be used together within the same deployment architecture.
Primal Technologies has provided the Charging solutions for some of the most innovative operators who are interested in maintaining a cohesive set of competitive Voice/Messaging/Data packages that work together and complement each other to effectively target as many subscriber niches as possible.
Some other examples of the convenience and feature flexibility that mobile network operators have gained with a Primal Advance Pay/Prepaid and OCS/PCRF solution include:
- ▪ Flexible, granular zone-based rating
- ▪ Automatic periodic charges (daily, weekly, monthly)
- ▪ Multiple dynamically created and configurable buckets for any media type (Voice, SMS, MMS, Data, Promotions, etc) to meet many marketing requirements
- ▪ Numerous recharge mechanisms and account balance/bucket management via WWW, IVR, USSD, SMS, HTML5
- ▪ WWW Responsive Subscriber Self-Care - branded for the operator
- ▪ Full PCI Compliancy for credit card top-ups
- ▪ Flexible Voucher/Card usage can be setup for any bundle plan or bucket purchase
- ▪ Full Web/XML compatibility for Web Provisioning & Subscriber Lifecycle Management
- ▪ Promotions for various criteria with bucket bonuses, etc
- ▪ DIAMETER Charging Interworking with 3rd Party SMSC and MMS vendors, or alternatively native charging interworking with Primal SMSC/IP-SM-GW/5G SMSF and MMS Server
- ▪ • DIAMETER Sy Interface and 5G N28 support to notify the PCRF/PCF when Spending Limit Thresholds are encountered for data throttling and return to full speed on recharge events.
- ▪ MVNO Capability (e.g. host other brands also)
- ▪ PCRF Tiered Policy Control
- ▪ PCRF Traffic type Policy Control
- ▪ Primal OCS/PCRF interworking for enhanced Policy Control based on bucket size/Usage
- ▪ 3rd Party Interworking over Sy interface
- ▪ Other custom features available
Furthermore, Primal OCS/PCRF interworks with many different vendors’ PCEF/DPI Solutions to support different data buckets and rating based upon on various identified data traffic types (e.g. specific social networking apps). Primal Technologies has included many sophisticated billing features that also allow Operators to move some of their subscribers to a lower cost of Ownership Advance Pay/Prepaid/OCS and PCRF platform.