Converged Charging
Take advantage of 5G monetization opportunities
Unlock 5G monetization opportunities with convergent charging
Nokia Converged Charging (NCC) is built for the dynamic needs of the 5G economy. It provides real-time rating and charging capabilities, enabling Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to effectively monetize all new revenue opportunities and provide a better experience for their consumer and enterprise customers.
What is converged charging?
Converged charging brings together online and off-line 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 charging function 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.
Gaming and converged charging
Challenges with converged charging
What are the challenges of converged charging?
Traditionally, converged charging systems were selected and deployed based on a predefined set of use cases. Today, legacy Business Support Systems (BSS) limit the creation of 5G monetization use cases due to their monolithic architectures, high support costs and real-time charging requirements.
Monolithic architecture frameworks are seldom flexible and have limited scalability. The mission-critical nature of monetization solutions means that these frameworks remain in use for decades and are seldom decommissioned completely. The cost of supporting and maintaining legacy systems are unsustainably high. Legacy BSS systems constrain CSPs’ ability to make timely launches of new products and offerings, or even provide real-time usage and billing information. This put severe limitations on CSPs’ ability to compete with over-the-top (OTT) providers and new entrants.
How to address converged charging challenges
3GPP standards
Through the SA5 Charging Sub-Working Group, Nokia is bringing standards evolutions to support charging from the earliest 3GPP new technologies and services into the 5G era. The charging function (CHF) is at the heart of effective monetization. The CHF incorporated into the 3GPP Converged Charging System is fully integrated into the 5G System through its own series of APIs which provide the Service Based Interfaces to other network elements. The 5G evolution has defined and enabled many additional integration points between the network functions.
Network slicing
In order to maximize ROI on advanced 5G networks, CSPs need to adapt to the changes through convergent charging. This includes moving from simple transactional interactions with customers, to enabling a full digital user experience. It includes moving from commodity offerings like voice and data to disruptive offerings such as digital services. Finally, CSPs will be able to monetize different elements of the network itself through capabilities like network slicing.
Charging by the slice - 5G Monetization
Cloud-native architecture
Nokia’s converged charging solution is built on a cloud native architecture using microservices and leveraging the flexibility and speed of containers. Continuous delivery and DevOps automation ensure superior agility and time to market. Nokia Converged Charging is 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.
Pre-integrated as part of Nokia 5G core and IoT solutions, it is also field tested within multi-vendor deployments for both 5G Standalone (SA) and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA).
Customer deployments
Converged charging deployments
Nokia’s cloud-native convergent charging software enables you to rapidly package, price and promote a wide range of consumer and business services and to future enhance the user experience. Developed for the needs of the 5G economy, internet-connected devices and multi-vendor deployments, Nokia Converged Charging provides the flexibility and agility to react quickly to changing market conditions.
Nokia Converged Charging solution
Nokia Converged Charging capabilities
Modern, or convergent charging systems are based on a services-based architecture and rely on containerized, cloud technology to deliver agility, automation, flexibility, and reliability, enabling 5G Service Providers to deliver these services to their consumers effectively.
Key features and benefits
New 5G revenue:
Differentiated pricing (speed, latency, reliability) and new usage charges (NaaS)
- Network slice monetization by usage, quality or SLA parameters
- Flexible product offerings for IoT, Enterprise, B2B2X, open partner ecosystem
Business agility and velocity:
- Empowers the business to configure new offers, including partner offers
- Leverages AI and automated decision-making to drive dynamic pricing
- Reduces vendor dependency with open APIs and SDKs
Embrace digital practices:
- Simplicity, transparency of offers and digital commerce models
- Payment flexibility, quotation accuracy and transparency
- Real-time personalized interactions using AI and analytics
Operational efficiency:
- Resource-efficient cloud-native, containerized microservices
- Modular, distributed architecture that reduces resource consumption
- Always-on and always innovating with in-service upgrades and CI/CD
5G Core (5GC)
Deploy a cloud-native mobile core for 5G New Radio (5G NR), so that you can innovate, execute and pivot to new opportunities
Insights and Analytics
Augment human intelligence and automate processes
Mediation
Mediation platform for data center consolidation
Monetization
Capturing new revenue opportunities for 5G use cases
Policy Controller
Scale your policy management for 4G and 5G
