Concepts in recording of services

A discussion is presented of the concepts in `usage-sensitive´ recording of services that are crucial to the Postal Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) system for collecting revenues for the telecommunication services offered to residential and business customers. While a lot of effort is spent on improving the transport and switching of voice, data, and image across networks, less effort is spent toward finding economical and efficient ways of recording and billing the customers. Without clear recording and billing strategies, unnecessary delays can be encountered when introducing new services. Further, with the arrival of new technologies such as integrated services digital network (ISDN), broadband ISDN (B-ISDN), synchronous optical network (SONET), and intelligent networks the functions of recording and billing become even more complex. With the aforementioned advanced technologies in mind, a description is given of the complexities in recording, and possible architectures for recording are proposed. Also, the need for selecting the `right switching system,´ that can provide flexible recording capabilities without costly field-upgrades is emphasized