Price Plans and Product Management

About this document

Scope

This document provides background information as well as a functional description of the Price Plans and Product Management basic feature. The described feature is supported from the release version 4.0 onwards.

Note

Price Plans and Product Management is a basic feature and does not require a special license.

Feature overview

Goals

The aim of the Price Plans and Product Management feature is to allow the management of Price Plans.

Functionality of the feature

Price Plans

Price Plans define the network usage prices and rates that are applied in subscriber contracts with Price Plans. Price Plans also give the conditions fur further products and services to be assigned.

Each SIM Card requires a valid Price Plan subscription in order to have access to mobile network services.

The CMP’s Price Plan engine supports two fundamentally different Price Plans models:

• Zone Price Plans, which define prices for services in specified Zones, and

• Network Price Plans, which define prices per Network for the usage of services over that Network.

Note that Network Price Plans can only be created and used if the corresponding feature is licensed on the CMP instance.

Difference between rating and billing

Rates define the pure cost for usage at which units of service (e.g. data, SMS) are charged, however, these rates alone do not cover the entire scope of how a Price Plan is billed each month. A Price Plan expands the pure rating costs with additional capabilities such as discounts, usage pools, free test allowances, and much more, therefore a difference will always exist between how a subscriber's activity is rated and billed.

What can be charged?

Price Plan Charges (per SIM and per Pool)

• One-Time Activation Charge

• Monthly Recurring Charge

Prepaid and Postpaid Usage Services on SIM

• Individual

• Flex Pool

• Static Pool

Zone Price Plans

Zone Price Plans allow prices to be defined for services in specified Zones, which are determined by the Zone Model of the Price Plan.

Plan Type

Zone Price Plans, depending on the selected Plan Type, can be either Individual or Pool Price Plans. In Individual Price Plans the consumption of each SIM Card is charged individually, in contrast to Pool Price Plans where the total volume of the Price Plan is distributed among multiple SIM Cards.

Rating Type

Zone Price Plans, depending on the selected Rating Type, can be either Prepaid or Postpaid. Prepaid and Postpaid Price Plans operate with different paradigms.

Prepaid Price Plans

• are independent of Billing Cycles,

• have pool/allowance and duration,

• do not allow overage,

• have no MRC, only a one-time period charge,

• will expire at the end of the allowed duration or when the allowance is consumed.

A Prepaid Price Plan can be enabled for Auto-Renew, meaning that once the Price Plan has either expired or got consumed, it will automatically renew itself for the same Price Plan and charges again.

Prepaid services are always charged for the entire duration of the service at the activation time.

Postpaid Price Plans

• align with Billing Cycles,

• have included pool/allowance,

• can have overage,

• have no end date.

Postpaid services are always charged at the end of the Billing Cycle.

Zone Model

A Zone is a regional entity that can cover a single network, multiple networks, or all networks within a country or a combination of countries (e.g., the EU or Asia).

Zone Models are templates that simplify the definition of Zones. Each Zone Price Plan includes at least two Zones:

• Home Zone

• Rest of World Zone

Additionally, custom Zones can be created as needed.

Note that Zone assignments have to be exclusive, i.e. a Network can only be included in one of the Zones of the same Zone Model.

In a Zone Price Plan, separate rates can be defined for each of the Zones for all the included - data, SMS, or voice (if applicable) - services.

Relationship between Zone Price Plans and Roaming Profiles

In the case of a Zone Price Plan, the choice of Network is done implicitly by the Roaming Profile, thus subscribers don’t have to care which Network is actually used and it is the responsibility of the Roaming Profile to ensure that a SIM will only attach to the networks which are defined in the Price Plan.

As a consequence, during Zone Price Plan creation it is critically important to select a Roaming Profile with a list of networks that do not exceed the list of networks defined in the Zone Model.

CAUTION: If the list of networks for the Price Plan and the Roaming Profile is not the same, then an expensive network could be used that was not included in the Price Plan calculation, which could lead to unexpectedly higher costs.

APN & Rating Groups

Rating Groups allow the CMP to identify and separate charged data usage based on the source IP Address or Radio Access Type (RAT).

The Service Provider then works with the Enterprise Customer to connect the APN with Rating Group to a Price Plan in the Billing Manager.

Time Slices

Time Slices refer to separate sections of a 24 hour day, where each section can have independently defined rates for the usage of services (e.g. data, SMS). Time Slice templates can be assigned to Accounts and then will be used during the creation of Zone Price Plans for the respective Account.

Charging Recurring and Non-Recurring Charges

Price Plans and Add-Ons can have a set of Recurring and Non-Recurring Charges.

Recurring Charges

Recurring Charges are charged on each Billing Cycle, hence the name Monthly Recurring Charge (MRC), and apply only to Postpaid Price Plans.

Non-Recurring/One-Time Charges

Non-Recurring Charges (NRC)/One-Time Charges (OTC) are charges triggered by an event (e.g. activation).

Lifecycle of a Price Plan

Price Plans can have five states throughout their lifecycle in CMP: Draft, For Approval, Approved, Suspended, and Terminated.

All Price Plans are initially created in status Draft, in which state they may be still edited and deleted if needed. After all the required details of the Price Plan have been set up, it can be submitted for approval and can be approved by users with the necessary permissions.

Once a Price Plan has been approved, it can be assigned to subscribers but can no longer be edited.

As subscribers always require a valid Price Plan assigned, Price Plans with subscribers assigned cannot be terminated, and can only be set in the Suspended state, which allows previously assigned subscribers to continue using the Price Plans, while blocks the assignment of new subscribers.

Versions of a Price Plan

Even though active (i.e. Approved) Price Plans cannot be modified themselves, the need to update the billing of an Account may arise, which can be handled by using versions of a Price Plan.

CMP provides two different solutions for this scenario:

• Create a new version of a Price Plan and adjust the desired configurations. In this case, the new version will automatically go into effect at the defined validity start date.

• Create a copy of an existing Price Plan and assign it to a subscriber after including the desired changes. In this case, the copy will exist as a separate Price Plan that must be manually activated (i.e. approved) in the Account.

Zone Price Plan Usage Limit

CMP allows Zone Price Plans to support a Usage Limit per SIM. Usage Limit is an optional feature. Usage Limit can be configured both in Prepaid and Postpaid Zone Price Plans, as an only exception Top Offs do not support any Usage Limit. The configured Usage Limit is independent of the Rating Type and the MRC Charge Type.

Usage Limits can apply on two levels and can be configured separately for each Usage Type:

• Global Usage Limit per Usage Type (e.g. Data)

• Usage Limit per Rating Filter (e.g. Data on Home Zone + APN 1)

If no Usage Limit is provided, the usage is not limited to any SIM on the Price Plan.

The following validation is executed in order to help Users to not configure limits which cannot ever be reached.

• The Total Usage Limit on Usage Type can’t be larger than the summary of all Usage Limits on all Rating Filters of the same Usage Type (only applicable if all Rating Filters have a Usage Limit configured).

• The Usage Limit on a Rating Filter can’t be larger than the Total Usage Limit on the same Usage Type (only applies if a Total Usage Limit got configured).

• In case of Prepaid, the Usage Limit on a Rating Filter can’t be larger than the Included Usage.
  If Prepaid Overage is configured, then the Usage Limit on a Rating Filter can’t be larger than the Included Usage + Overage.

Account Default Settings

Account Default Settings already support overriding the Usage Limit of an Account to ignore all Usage Limits on any Price Plan on that Account. The following values can be configured:

• Disabled

  • Usage Limit applies according to the Price Plan configuration

• Temporary (current Billing Cycle)

  • Usage Limit does not apply (even if configured at the Price Plan)

  • gets reset automatically to "Disabled" when the next Billing Cycle starts

  • does also apply for Prepaid

    • no matter of the validity of the Prepaid Price Plan, it resets automatically and is aligned with the Billing Cycle

• Permanent

  • Usage Limit does not apply (even if configured at the Price Plan)

  • does not reset automatically but has to be explicitly changed manually

From priority, the SIM level override applies first. Account level comes in only if the SIM level override is configured to be Disabled. In case the Account level is also configured to be Disabled, the Price Plan level Usage Limit Override applies.

SIM Settings

The SIM Grid of the Enterprise Portal allows Account Users to gain information of the current Usage Limit of selected SIM Cards and also to configure the override behavior on SIM level.

Zone Price Plan Prepaid Overage

CMP allows configuring Prepaid Zone Price Plans to allow Overage per Zone.

Prepaid Overage is an optional feature, and the Price Plan stores an enabled/disabled indicator of whether Overage should be allowed within the given Zone.

• If enabled, the User has to define Overage Costs.

• If disabled, current functionality (i.e. no overage) will apply.

Note that Prepaid Overage can only apply to SIMs, that are enabled for Prepaid Block Override.

Prepaid Block Override

Prepaid Block Override can be configured on SIM level, and this value overrides the default Block behavior of the Prepaid Price Plan.

• If enabled, any block behavior (means the ‘behavior when usage exhausted’) configured within the Price Plan is ignored, i.e. the SIM can consume an unlimited amount of usage in the Zone until the Prepaid Price Plan validity (term) ends.

• If disabled, there is no Block Override, i.e. the block behavior (means the ‘behavior when usage exhausted’) configured in the Price Plan applies.

• Any configured Usage Limit (per SIM and Billing Cycle) is not affected by Prepaid Overage or the Block Override configuration of a SIM. The Usage Limit is executed per SIM and is independent of any block behavior (means the ‘behavior when usage exhausted’).

Overage Calculation

In Overage Calculation, CMP considers the Overage Indicator within the Price Plan, the Block Override Indicator of the SIM, and the whether the Price Plan is configured for Auto-Renew.

• If Auto-Renew is enabled

  • Auto-Renew only applies at the end of the validity (end of term) of the Price Plan (i.e. no usage based Auto-Renew can apply), and

  • applies only for the related Zone, which is configured for Prepaid Overage, and

  • applies only for SIMs, which are configured for Prepaid Block Override

• If Auto-Renew is disabled

  • if usage applies to a Zone that is not enabled for Prepaid Overage

    • Usage or Price Plan will be blocked as usual,

  • if usage applies to a Zone, which is enabled for Prepaid Overage

    • if SIM is not configured for Block Override, Usage will be blocked,

    • if SIM is configured for Block Override, Usage will continue and will be counted towards the Price Plan like Postpaid.

The SIM Billing Status is not touched for any overage and block configuration. The SIM is intended to be blocked in the Network, while the Billing Status remains the same.
Only if the Prepaid term ends and there is no Auto-Renew configured, the SIM will change its Billing Status into Retired.

Auto-Renew

Normally, a Prepaid SIM does trigger a configured Auto-Renew event, once any Zone gets exhausted or the prepaid validity (term) end. It can also be configured that specific Zones can continue to consume usage and only dedicated gets blocked until the validity (term) ends.

If a Price Plan is configured for Prepaid Overage and a SIM is enabled for Block Override, the Auto-Renewal event for usage is disabled and Auto-Renew only applies at the end of the validity (end of term) of the Price Plan.

Top Off

Even though Top Offs consume any kind of overage, it has to be noted that Top Offs only work with Postpaid Zone Price Plans, therefore Top Offs do not consume any Prepaid Overage.

Zone Price Plan Bulk Overage

Bulk Overage in Postpaid Zone Price Plans means to round up the overusage at the end of the Billing Cycle, i.e. charging in chunks. As a result, the Operator will always charge a higher rate than the actual usage.

The Bulk Overage feature is optional. Enabling the feature simply rounds the total Overage Usage to the next block size at the given Zone at the end of the Billing Cycle.
Bulk Overage rounding is a charging feature only and is not reflected in any reports nor the Online EDR/Offline CDR details.

Disable Proration at last month

To support situations where the Operator wants to charge the full month, regardless of when the SIM moved in or out of Billing Status In Billing, CMP allows disabling pro-ration at the first and last month. In such cases also the full Monthly Included allowance is granted.

The feature enables Price Plans to charge full MRC for a SIM at the last month and to still grant full Monthly Included allowance for the SIM, regardless of when the SIM Card moved into Billing Status Retired.

The functionality of this feature is available for all Postpaid Price Plans.

Disabling pro-ration at last month is triggered once the SIM has moved into Billing Status Retired. The SIM Card is deactivated (i.e. Network Status is set to INACTIVE) immediately when the SIM is retired, however, the CMP charges the MRC and grants the included allowance until the end of the Billing Cycle to keep the full allowance.

Note that such retirement cannot be reverted.

PCRF integration for Data throttle

CMP configuration defines if a PCRF intergration is available on the CMP instance and for a supportive Platform Type.

In such case, when a SIM is activated or does change its Postpaid Price Plan, the PCRF is provisioned with the bandwidth specified in the Price Plan. This ensures that the SIM has internet access without exceeding the defined bandwidth limits.

Further, an Account can be configured to either follow the Price Plan specific allow or block condition for overage or throttle the bandwidth once the included monthly usage got consumed.