Fierce competition and increasing customer expectations are encouraging telecom operators to focus more on enhanced customer experience. On the one hand, operators want to be the first in the market to launch new innovative offers and to differentiate from competition. On the other hand, the customers are more and more demanding: any billing error directly impacts either the operator revenues, either the company reputation.

Quick time-to-market means high risk of incurring billing errors. Unfortunately the communication networks, the information processes & systems are not the flawless network components most people think they are! The reduced time for test cycles leads to higher risks of billing errors when launching new offers and new rate plans. This is why operators need to perform tests in a timely, proactive and targeted way. Simply to detect billing errors before they turn into customer complaints or revenue leakages.

Fierce competition and increasing customer expectations are encouraging telecom operators to focus more on enhanced customer experience. On the one hand, operators want to be the first in the market to launch new innovative offers and to differentiate from competition. On the other hand, the customers are more and more demanding: any billing error directly impacts either the operator revenues, either the company reputation.

Quick time-to-market means high risk of incurring billing errors. Unfortunately the communication networks, the information processes & systems are not the flawless network components most people think they are! The reduced time for test cycles leads to higher risks of billing errors when launching new offers and new rate plans. This is why operators need to perform tests in a timely, proactive and targeted way. Simply to detect billing errors before they turn into customer complaints or revenue leakages.

From friendly user testing to automated comprehensive testing. When launching new offers, it is a common practice for the operators to perform Friendly User Tests (FUT). However FUT are manual tests with a limited functional coverage (e.g. roaming services are usually not tested).

Automated testing enables you to both save time and to perform comprehensive testing.

• Why Araxxe is the right partner to help you secure the launch of new offers in the market? 
• We offer revenue assurance monitoring services to support telecom operators with the introduction of new offers:
• We design advanced test campaigns focusing on your new offers: we build tailor-made test plans allowing to fully test your new rate plans.
• We operate test campaigns in an industrialized way: testing is automated and based on test call generation.
• We check that every single transaction generated in the test campaign is properly billed.
• We deliver quick results: new rate plans are being validated pre & post launch
• We offer a flexible managed service which minimizes the effort required on the operator side during the launch of the new rate plan
• You leverage Araxxe unique expertise in both test campaign design and billing verification.

Premium Rate Services (PRS) are high-tariff services which account for 2 to 4 % of the annual mobile operator revenues (European average). Surprisingly, PRS billing is hardly monitored today despite customer complaints due to the lack of tariff awareness and / or billing errors. PRS also squeeze the operator margin due to the high costs charged by PRS partners. Any error can be immediately turned into a cash machine by professional fraudsters that constantly monitors the market.

Retail billing of PRS requires special monitoring because the charging principles are more complex and may include: flat fee rates, time-dependent rates (including a minimum/maximum charge per call), variable rates (depending on options selected by the subscriber), fees for additional services, special VAT schemes, etc.

Moreover PRS are usually outside the core package rate plans which result in limited testing and in billing errors being undetected. This may have a huge impact, e.g. a mobile operator in Europe recently had to refund €1.9 million to subscribers who had been billed incorrectly for 3 years for calls made to third-party premium rate numbers.

Premium Rate Services (PRS) are high-tariff services which account for 2 to 4 % of the annual mobile operator revenues (European average). Surprisingly, PRS billing is hardly monitored today despite customer complaints due to the lack of tariff awareness and / or billing errors. PRS also squeeze the operator margin due to the high costs charged by PRS partners. Any error can be immediately turned into a cash machine by professional fraudsters that constantly monitors the market.

Retail billing of PRS requires special monitoring because the charging principles are more complex and may include: flat fee rates, time-dependent rates (including a minimum/maximum charge per call), variable rates (depending on options selected by the subscriber), fees for additional services, special VAT schemes, etc.

Moreover PRS are usually outside the core package rate plans which result in limited testing and in billing errors being undetected. This may have a huge impact, e.g. a mobile operator in Europe recently had to refund €1.9 million to subscribers who had been billed incorrectly for 3 years for calls made to third-party premium rate numbers.

Although the operator does not provide the service itself, the subscribers usually send their complaints to them - not to the premium rate service provider. These complaints may have serious financial impact: e.g. in North America, three mobile operators were required to stop misleading adverts promoting premium rate SMS and to compensate subscribers with refunds and penalties ranging between $1 million and $10 million.

Further to retail billing issues, the operators should also carefully address other risks impacting inter-operator revenues. Sometimes retail rates for PRS calls are lower than the interconnect cost charged by the wholesale carrier. On top of this, there is also a risk to manage unprofitable premium rate services as soon as the termination fee charged to the A-party is lower than the revenue share paid to the content provider.

Why Araxxe is the right partner to help you optimize your revenues derived from premium rate services?
While basic revenue assurance programmes are in place within most operators, the process improvements should keep pace with the changing telecom landscape. Araxxe monitoring services can help you to be deal with forms of leakage that are specific to PRS.
We design advanced test campaigns to premium rate numbers (both voice and SMS)
We operate -on your behalf- flexible test campaigns delivered in an industrialized way.
We check that each single transaction is properly billed: retail billing, interconnect billing and revenue sharing.
You select the monitoring mode addressing your business needs: in depth audit or recurring monitoring.
You leverage Araxxe unique expertise in both test campaign design and billing verification.

4G LTE: risk higher than ever for lost revenues?
4G LTE is now starting to drastically change the use of mobile data services. But, while mobile data traffic is growing exponentially, revenues paid by subscribers are either flat or declining due to intense competition. “How to price and bill for data services?” is still the most important issue which mobile operators are facing today!

Data transactions are currently usually rated and charged by volume; 'unlimited' data plans are still very popular even if operators are keen to phase them out.  Operators are also experimenting with alternative models e.g. pricing by event or by duration of usage. On top of this, they often also promote the use of data services passes for infrequent data users or roamers. More recently, other sophisticated data plans are emerging in the market, such as tiered-data plans, application-based models, service bundles, turbo boost, device-based plans, shared data bundles,...
As pricing and billing strategies are becoming more complicated and diverse in an attempt to maximise revenues from data services, new risks must be addressed by the operators:

4G LTE: risk higher than ever for lost revenues?
4G LTE is now starting to drastically change the use of mobile data services. But, while mobile data traffic is growing exponentially, revenues paid by subscribers are either flat or declining due to intense competition. “How to price and bill for data services?” is still the most important issue which mobile operators are facing today!

Data transactions are currently usually rated and charged by volume; 'unlimited' data plans are still very popular even if operators are keen to phase them out.  Operators are also experimenting with alternative models e.g. pricing by event or by duration of usage. On top of this, they often also promote the use of data services passes for infrequent data users or roamers. More recently, other sophisticated data plans are emerging in the market, such as tiered-data plans, application-based models, service bundles, turbo boost, device-based plans, shared data bundles,...
As pricing and billing strategies are becoming more complicated and diverse in an attempt to maximise revenues from data services, new risks must be addressed by the operators:

When charging by volume, do you really know the actual size of your data transactions?
In which unit and where do you measure it? These strange questions do not look so techy anymore when it comes to properly charging your end-customers; or when you check roaming costs having a deeper look into the TAP files sent by your roaming partners.

How do you monitor -today- popular use cases such as data passes?
The data pass story looks simple (e.g. 60MB for a 24-hour period).

However what if the data services are not properly suspended once the data has run out?
And what about roaming data passes?
Are you ready to monitor and secure revenues derived from new data plans?
As new data plans and use cases are being launched, the need of active monitoring is also increasing. Sophisticated use cases require sophisticated monitoring.

Why Araxxe is the right partner to help you maximise revenues from data services?
Araxxe managed services can help you monitoring the main risks on data services billing.
We design specific test campaigns addressing your business objectives and focusing on data services billing errors detection.
You take advantage of Araxxe its global test platform: our international network of robots (last generation test call generators) and our large portfolio of international telecom subscriptions.
We operate -on your behalf- test campaigns delivered in an industrialized way.
We deliver actionable reports enabling to quickly fix revenue leakages.
You leverage Araxxe unique expertise in both test campaign design and revenue assurance.