Orga Systems' Eva Heumann also talks of offering a converged billing/policy management solution. "We want our customers to have the choice of a real-time convergent billing solution that puts all subscribers in one database - prepaid and postpaid - to determine qualified tariffs. We can also provide a dedicated policy solution that is integrated with the billing solution for dedicated policy management and control."
Some are now offering what they call the "full stack." It is obvious that some billing players believe operators in emerging markets will want to avoid working with too many vendors and too many components. In Asia, where prepaid dominates, it might be natural to think operators would turn to network players. But in more mature markets like Hong Kong and Singapore or Australia, the billing vendors might prove sophisticated enough to have an opportunity to fight back the network-oriented vendors.
"It's easier for established real-time rating and charging players to add policy management and rules-based capabilities into their solutions. There's inherently more complexity in charging than in adding advanced sets of rules, where rules are activated when certain 'states' are reached," contends Hilton.
But some would counter that policy management specialists are better prepared for more complicated DPI capabilities once more sophisticated and dynamic policy management is needed.
"Policies should be related to how customers are charged; having them together will make sense," said Olivier Suard from Comptel. Though he agrees there's room for integration, he thinks policy control integration with charging will be the domain of online charging mediation suppliers.
That doesn't come as a surprise, since Comptel is known for policy control, online charging, offline charging, online and offline mediation - all essential elements to sophisticated policy management.
He said experience integrating with IT and BSS solutions as well as legacy systems will be important to that integration. "That expertise will help operators build business intelligence for real-time decisions about policies, charging and offering new services on the fly."