What are the requirements for the 5G Monetization Solution?
Requirements for the 5G Monetization Solution
Without
doubts, 5G has provided the much-needed innovation and flexibility for the
Operators to look for different revenue streams & partnerships. 5G is
bringing many exciting services related to eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC use cases.
(Click to enlarge) 5G Use cases and Services (Image Courtesy: ITU) |
These services
require high bandwidth (e.g. FWA, 4K content delivery), low latency/high
threshold (e.g. AR/VR, Self-driving cars), and high density (e.g. IoT devices,
Smart Cities) based on their categorization.
The
excitement & new opportunities bring the challenges of monetizing these
advanced services.
Network
Slicing will allow Operators to provide dedicated logical networks with the
virtualized network functions, storage, compute & processing capabilities
to cater to different services & related functionalities. This will give
flexibility to Operators to make use of their physical network resources in
efficient ways based on the slice requirements.
(Click to enlarge) 5G Charging System and Network Slicing |
5G
Monetization solution should be capable to charge customers/enterprises based
on their Network slices. In other words, the 5G Monetization solution should allow
accurate Slice-based charging.
(Click to enlarge) 5G Charging System Requirements |
Below are some of the requirements which 5G Monetization
solution should support:-
- Be Cloud-native so that features like serverless, elasticity, auto-scaling, fault-tolerance, etc. can be achieved.
- To support both Online & Offline Charging methodologies to provide a Converged Charging solution.
- To support Virtualization and Containerization.
- To support Pre-paid & Post-paid payment models for allowing consumption of Services based on available credit balance as well as the credit limit.
- Ability to handle advanced analytics to offer service personalization & upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
- Ability to perform AAA activities on the network slices in action.
- Architecture to be built using Microservices design patterns.
- To follow Continuous Integration, Continuous Development, and Continuous Deployment practices.
- To support flexible deployment options like Co-existence, Standalone or Full-stack deployments.
- To support low latency and high threshold in processing charging requests at a very high TPS.
- To support dynamic pricing configuration.
- Tight integration with NFs like NRF, PCF, SMF, UPF, AF, etc.
- To support backward compatibility with 4G & legacy networks so that charging requests based on protocols like Diameter & CAMEL can be mediated into RESTful APIs.
- ..........
OSS/BSS
readiness & transformation gains prime importance in tapping the exciting opportunities
offered by the 5G Network at this critical juncture. And, 5G Monetization
Solution plays a very crucial role in this transformation.
NOTE: You can refer to my
other articles to know about the Basics of Online Charging and Basics of Offline Charging. This
is the series created to cover the basics of Telecom Charging and will contain
more articles on 5G Network Converged Charging in the future.
Kindly share this article with your friends and colleagues. Feel free to like and comment. Happy learning.
Glossary: 3GPP (3rd
Generation Partnership Project), BSS (Business Support System), OSS (Operations
Support System), eMBB (enhanced Mobile Broadband), URLLC (Ultra-Reliable
Low Latency Communications), mMTC (massive Machine Type Communications), FWA
(Fixed Wireless Access), AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting),
ABMF (Account Balance Management Function), RF (Rating Function), NRF (Network Resources
Function), AF (Application Function), PCF (Policy Control Function), CTF
(Charging Trigger Function), SMF (Session Management Function), UPF (User Plane
Function), NF (Network Function), CAMEL (Customized Applications for Mobile
network Enhanced Logic)
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