Convergent Charging solutions

Take advantage of 5G monetization opportunities in converged charging with Nokia Convergent Charging solutions

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Are you ready for 5G monetization?

The evolution of mobile networks from 4G to 5G to 5G SA (Stand Alone) has created significant cost pressures on Communication Service Providers (CSPs). As such, they seek new ways to get return on their investment and better monetize their assets. 

Additionally, 5G is revolutionizing the telecom industry through innovative use cases ranging from cloud gaming for consumers, to machine remote control for enterprises. To unlock the commercial value of these use cases, they need to be offered through new value driven business models beyond traditional session and volume-based products.

Nokia’s recent 5G monetization survey uncovered some startling facts. A staggering 98% of operators surveyed realize that they need to alter their existing BSS systems to support new 5G use cases. The primary objective of BSS transformation would be to offer new and innovative pricing models based on quality of service, location, network slice, and API usage, among other parameters.

Selecting Nokia Policy Controller along with the Nokia Charging Function can improve your monetization opportunities and widen your business services. Lower implementation, integration, and operational costs can be achieved with a single vendor solution. And all this can reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO).
 

Current charging systems don’t support effective 5G monetization

To enable effective 5G monetization, CSPs need an agile, future-ready monetization system, and at the heart of this is the charging engine. Our survey found that two thirds of CSP’s rate real time charging as the top investment area for 5G monetization. A highly configurable charging solution which drives fast automated offer creation through proven integration with 5G SA Core network functions is the need of the hour.

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Unlocking 5G monetization opportunities with Convergent Charging

Convergent charging brings together online and off-line charging systems to address new and emerging 5G monetization use cases. Introduced by 3GPP, the charging function (CHF) collects all network and service usage data. 

The 5G charging function (5G CHF) enables payments (understands how much a user should be charged for services consumed) and allows CSPs to create new services and offers and roll these out quickly and efficiently to consumers.

Charging for any 5G use case

Unlocking the monetization potential of 5G demands high flexibility of the charging solution to support future rating and charging models. Triggers for charging could include quality of service, slices, API events, IoT device streams – essentially the new 5G charging solution should be capable of “Charging Anything”. In addition, the new charging system should simplify and automate new product and offer creation for the 5G ecosystem. No-code or low-code monetization systems can catalyze this offer creation process speeding up time to market.

Nokia's Convergent Charging solutions

Nokia Convergent Charging solutions are built for the dynamic needs of the 5G economy. It provides real-time rating and charging capabilities, enabling CSPs to effectively monetize all new revenue opportunities and provide a better experience for their consumer and enterprise customers. To cater to the needs of our different customers, Nokia Charging solutions are available in two deployment models:

Nokia Converged Charging (NCC) is a cloud native charging solution that provides real-time rating and charging capabilities, enabling new monetization opportunities for communication service providers (CSPs) and enterprises. NCC covers the role of OCS in 4G network, CCS in 5G, and with its flexible product and no code functionality offers can be used to rate and charge for any type of usage.

AVA Charging as a Service - The SaaS evolution of our proven Nokia Converged Charging (NCC) solution accelerates 5G BSS transformation, offers fast proven integration with 5G SA network functions, and provides CSPs the capability to rapidly bring new commercial product offers to market through automation, product catalog with pre-defined use cases and GUI driven no-code charging configuration.
 

Benefits of Nokia's Convergent Charging solutions

Nokia's Convergent Charging solutions are designed to support all current and future services and offers, and help CSPs effectively monetize 5G. Built on a cloud native architecture using microservices, it can be deployed over public cloud or operator defined Container as a Service (CaaS) environments.

Proven to scale, our Charging solutions are commercially deployed in customer environments exceeding 100+ million subscribers. Carrier grade performance is assured - charging records for more than 1.5 billion customers are handled by Nokia Charging solutions across the globe today.

Fully integrated solution

Our Charging solutions are augmented by adjacent BSS capabilities such as mediation, billing and policy control, as well as Nokia’s rich set of AI/ML enabled customer and business analytics capabilities. In addition, Nokia can offer a complete 5G Digital Monetization solution.

Pre-integrated as part of Nokia 5G core solutions, it is also field proven with multi-vendor deployments for both 5G Standalone (SA) and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA).

Agile configuration to charge for anything

With our no code charging configurator, we have removed the usual obstacles to a smooth workflow and developed something truly easy to use with pre-defined components and simple and intuitive UI. It’s very quick to create and modify offers, with highly flexible rules to allow both your priorities and your markets the space to evolve. These offers can be extended towards any vertical (think utilities, smart cities or logistics), providing our flexible no-code based rating and charging for ‘non connectivity’ streams and API events. For example, our Converged Charging solutions are currently being used as part of a charging and billing solution for electricity, gas and water consumption across a smart city in the MEA region.

Multiple transformation approaches

Integrate Nokia’s 5G Convergent Charging solution to your existing BSS environment through our easily to implement open API’s and SDK. Or we can help you build out a complete 5G BSS Digital monetization solution bringing Nokia’s Convergent Charging, Mediation, Policy and other monetization capabilities pre-integrated with partner BSS solutions such as Qvantel Flex BSS.

SaaS: The next evolution of BSS

Built on Nokia’s Telecom SaaS delivery framework, AVA Charging as a Service is an evolution of our proven Nokia Converged Charging (NCC) solution and can be deployed over a choice of hyperscaler public clouds. Proven carrier grade charging with inbuilt catalog for fast 5G and IoT monetization for increased business agility and to accelerate BSS transformation.

AVA Charging helps you commercialize new offers quickly and flexibly. If your business grows, the service grows with you and remains reliable, thanks to the carrier grade scalability.

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