Zone Price Plan Tiering (FT-1025.001)

About this document

Scope

This document provides background information as well as a functional description of the FT-1025.001 Zone Price Plan Tiering standard feature. The described feature is supported from the release version 5.0 onwards.

Note

Zone Price Plan Tiering is a standard feature and does not require a special license.

This feature is part of the Price Plan Behavior / Options functionality with number FN-1025.

Feature Availability

Feature overview

Goals

The aim of the Zone Price Plan Tiering feature is to enable Zone Price Plans to support Tiering.

Out of scope

• Network Group Price Plans

• Accounts, which are configured for Rating Type “Prorated”

• Accounts, which are configured for MRC Charge Type “in Advance”

• Flex Pool and Individual Price Plans for Tiering of Monthly Included Usage

• Fix Pool Price Plans for Tiering of Monthly Included Usage for Tier Charge Type “Per Tier Bucket”

• Prepaid Price Plans (including Top-Off)

• Postpaid Price Plans with any block configuration (means the ‘behavior when usage exhausted’)
  Any configured Usage Limit (per SIM and Billing Cycle) does still apply and is independent of any tiering.

Functionality of the feature

CMP allows Zone Price Plans to support Tiering. Tiering is a mechanism to control specific Charges and Monthly Included Usage based on the number of active SIM Cards on a Price Plan. Tiering allows configuring multiple levels of pricing and usage, where the correct value for calculation is selected at the end of the Billing Cycle.

Tiering can apply to two different object types in Price Plans:

• Price Points (MRC and Overage Price)

• Monthly Included Usage

The following principle definitions apply when defining tiers:

• Tiers are defined as blocks,

• “up to” values have to be defined,

• the only exception to that is the last block, which is “unlimited”, and

• a maximum of 20 tiers are supported.

Tiers are calculated based on the number of SIMs on that Price Plans, and Tiering supports two different calculation types:

• Highest Bucket: At the time of rating all SIMs shall be rated at the highest applicable tier.

• Per Tier Bucket: At the time of rating each SIM shall be rated based on the tier they belong to.

Active SIM Cards in relation to tier calculations are considered to be unique SIMs (each SIM can only contribute exactly once per Billing Cycle, no matter how often and when it changed its status), which are assigned to the related Price Plan and are in status In-Billing at the end of the Billing Cycle. There is no minimum obligation, i.e. it does not matter how long the SIM was in status In-Billing or how long it was assigned to the Price Plan.
Further, SIMs in status Suspended are also considered, if the related Price Plan is configured to “grant allowance during suspend” (so the SIM does still contribute to the total pool allowance).

Price Plan Tier Counters have to be increased/decreased in case of the following events:

• SIM moves into status In-Billing - increase counter by one

• SIM moves out of status In-Billing - decrease counter by one

• SIM moves to the Price Plan - increase counter by one

• SIM moves out of the Price Plan - decrease counter by one

• SIM resides into status Suspended for full Billing Cycle with “grant allowance enabled” - keep counter by one

• SIM resides into status Suspended for full Billing Cycle with “grant allowance disabled” - decrease counter by one

Tiering is an option of an individual Price Plan, therefore it can be changed in any Sub-Version, and it can change to a future Version without any tiering.

The Price Plan Tiering feature can be enabled “on-demand”, tiering configuration options in the GUI only become available if the feature is enabled. Note that the tiering configuration option is only available in Zone Price Plans and if the Price Plan configuration is as follows:

• Postpaid

• Pool

  • Flex: support MRC and Overage tiering

  • Fix: support MRC, Overage and Included Usage tiering

• Individual: support MRC and Overage tiering

• If Price Plan is DEDICATED

  • The related Account has to be configured accordingly

    • MRC Charge Type = In Retrospect

    • Rating Type = Retrospective

• If Price Plan is SHARED

  • Tiering can always be configured

  • Account MRC Charge Type and Rating Type will be verified when the Price Plan gets assigned to the Account at the Entitlements of that Account

Whenever a Price Plan is assigned to a Master Account via Entitlements, then the Price Plan is being checked for Tiering. In case Tiering is enabled, the MRC Charge Type and Rating Type of the Account gets verified as the Price Plan can only be assigned if the Account is configured to

• MRC Charge Type = In Retrospect

• Rating Type = Retrospective

Usage-based Tiering

Note: Usage-based Tiering is not supported for

• Postpaid Pool, any Prepaid or Supplemental Price Plans, and

• Prorated Accounts.

The Tiering Base Type defines which base has to be used to calculate the correct Tier at the end of the Billing Cycle. If Usage in Home Zone is selected, SIMs shall be charged based on the total Data Usage in the Home Zone during a Billing Cycle.

Usage-based Tiering is only available for Postpaid Individual Price Plans.

In Price Plans configured for usage-based Tiering, the User can configure

• MRC(s) per Tier,

• Overusage price for Data per Zone, APN, Rating Group and Time Slice, and

• Monthly Included Data Usage for all Zones except for the Home Zone.

In Price Plans configured for usage-based Tiering, the User can't configure

• any Overusage price per Tier, and

• Monthly Included Data Usage for the Home Zone.