Charging, accounting and billing as a sophisticated and reconfigurable discrete service for next generation mobile networks

The evolution of the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) creates an open market; where a large number of independent application/service providers will offer their services to the users through a limited number of network providers. Moreover, the convergence of the UMTS with the Internet world is about to alter the existing business models. The support of advanced business models is a chance but also implies new requirements. Among the important issues that are to be resolved in order to facilitate the establishment of these advanced models, is the support of innovative, flexible and efficient charging, accounting and billing mechanisms. We propose the complexity involved in all these issues to be handled by an intelligent and integrated platform that will be responsible for coordinating the charging, accounting and billing process allowing all the involved players to affect dynamically these processes. Moreover, the generation of a single, itemised bill for delivered services, which is required from the user perspective, is well accommodated in the proposed platform.