During 2018, the global prepaid communications market accounted for 71 percent (5.7 billion) of all mobile connections, and 32 percent ($265 billion) of service revenue. In developing economies, those numbers skew even more heavily towards prepaid. For example, in Africa prepaid service accounts for 94 percent of wireless connections and 80 percent of revenue.
RAID Prepaid Balance Validation is a solution developed to audit the accuracy of prepaid balances. It also monitors and reports anomalies on the Service Delivery Platforms (SDP) that deliver real-time communication services for both consumer and business users, over any access network, and for any device type.
No matter the subscription type, network, device or service, RAID Prepaid Balance Validation (PBV) affords the utmost flexibility in auditing customer account balances. As an auditing tool, RAID PBV offers several advanced features, including monitoring prepaid balance ‘trigger events’, and reconciling customer balances and recharges.
Even when RAID PBV is not the native rating or charging authority for a service, (such as IN-based voice or SMS), it can be integrated with external charging systems and balance managers in order to audit all service consumption, so that there is one account or balance of record to guarantee accuracy and avoid revenue leakage.
RAID Revenue Assurance modules include a set of prebuilt business validations that help analysts to address issues right out-of-the-box. Due to its intuitive graphical modelling interface, RAID’s business validation features enable operators to explicitly define, analyze, execute, audit and maintain a wide variety of rules that map directly to a business’s underlying business logic.
Multiple built-in checkpoints can ensure that all issues identified are reported and tracked, providing an all-inclusive view of the risk management process, enabling service providers to rapidly evolve the prevention of revenue leakage on a continuous basis.
With the evolution of telecommunication offers and the increase in omni-channel services, customers have become more demanding, expecting wireless services to be instantly available the moment they recharge their user accounts. At the same time, marketing teams are constantly developing new service bundles, add-ons and top-up offers, in hopes of attracting and retaining more customers and increasing ARPU by getting users to boost mobile internet use and top-up their SIM cards.
RAID PBV auditing protects communication service providers (CSPs) from revenue leakage and improves the customer experience by providing a clear audit trail of current prepaid service/bundle consumption, data usage, balances and limits.
Accurately metering subscriber data consumption is a requirement in most telecommunications markets, and it is especially critical in prepaid markets where bite-sized internet plans and time-based plans are effective revenue and differentiation strategies.
RAID PBV collects data from Policy Control and Enforcement Function (PCEF) and/or Traffic Detection Function (TDF) nodes, and integrates it with Policy and Charging Rule Function (PCRF) and Online and Offline Charging Systems (OCS/OFCS) for auditing proposes. Accurate metering guarantees correct account balances for subscribers that may suffer due to under or over-counting.
Over-the-top content is an integral part of the digital lifestyle for most prepaid subscribers. One way service providers can capitalize on this phenomenon is by generating and sharing revenue through tiered bundles of popular OTT content and services. Service providers can offer bundles of various pay-for-use applications and then load them onto smartphones at the point of sale, together with fair usage policies regarding usage caps and overages – all with the benefits unified charging.
With RAID PBV, MNOs can also ensure successful zero-rating campaigns and reduce the risk and complexity associated with balance inaccuracies.