BSNL Chennai Telephones is examining a proposal from its corporate clientele to extend the automated best value selection available in the meter-based billing on landlines to the call detail record (CDR) billing system that is set to roll out by June. The “Best Value Plan Option”, or BVP feature, is an automated provision where the computer slots monthly bill in the most attractive tariff plan based on volume and pattern of calls to the advantage of the customer.
Though previously, the BVP feature was available across all categories of landline customers, it was subsequently limited to corporate clients after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India directed that the selection of tariff plan was the prerogative of the consumer and not the service provider.
While all other Secondary Switching Areas in the State have already migrated to CDR billing, Chennai Telephones has preferred to go slow as the process involves the transactions of over 1 million customers---virtually half its subscriber base in the entire State.
The introduction of CDR-based billing is expected to converge the entire customer engagement lifecycle, from order management processing and line provisioning to payments and accounting.
The touted benefits of CDR-based billing includes lower operational cost, higher revenue realization and minimum revenue leakage.The versatility of CDR billing allows it to track next generation services such as IPTV, Voice over Internet Protocol or Video On Demand on a single billing platform, officials said.
Another CDR feature that is appealing to corporate customers is the facility to map the call costs of a business entity with multiple branches across the country and generate a single consolidated bill.
Chennai Telephones' corporate clientele accounts for only about 20 per cent of its customer base; but generates almost 80 per cent of its net revenues. While this can reason enough to be attentive to the corporate sector's demand for the BVP feature in CDR billing, officials point out that it may not be easy to accede.
BSNL's IT cell would have to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating a BVP-like feature in the CDR system that can then be applied to corporate clients alone. Even if a technical solution exists, there could be the issue of getting the approval from the top brass in Delhi if extending a sop is without precedent in any of the other telecom circles, an official said. Meanwhile, dry runs with CDR billing concurrently with the existing meter-based system have been successful. “We have run both billing systems in parallel and the errors have been negligible,” said BSNL Chennai Telephones Chief General Manager A. Subramanian. However, BSNL would like to iron out some issues in the city's congested pathways before launching CDR billing by June.
