Services and System Aspects;Charging and Billing

- It shall be possible to charge separately for each type of medium used (e.g. voice, video, data) in a session and for each service used (e.g. voice call, streaming video, file download);

- It shall be possible to charge for different levels of QoS applied for and/or allocated during a session for each type of medium or service used;

- It shall be possible to charge each “leg” of a session separately. This includes the incoming and outgoing legs and any forwarded/redirected legs. (Note: The legs mentioned here are logical legs, i.e. not necessarily identical to actual signal and traffic flow. Even though tromboning may be avoided by optimal routing, the operator should still be able to charge for the ‘virtual legs’ of the call)

- The user can be charged according to the service used irrespective of the technology used to deliver it. (That is, the charge is not derived from whether 2G or 3G is used);

- The user can be charged according to the technology used to deliver a service. (That is, different charges can be applied on 2G and 3G);

- It shall be possible to charge a user according to the network resources used. For example, if a large bandwidth is required to use high quality video, the user could be charged accordingly. This is related to charging by QoS;

- It shall be possible to charge users flexibly for the use of extra resources (in at least the same network) for all legs of the call. For example, if a video component is added to a voice call the use of extra radio resource at both ends of the call could be paid for by each user in the call or totally by the initiating user.

- It shall be possible to suppress charging for certain types of connection e.g. when a customer receives tones or network announcements or during sessions such as automated pre-pay top-up.

- It shall be possible for the home network to charge its customers while roaming in the same ways as when they are at home. For example, if duration based charging is used for charging for streaming music in the home network, then it shall be possible to apply the same principle when the user is roaming.

- It shall be possible for operators to have the option to apply charging mechanisms that are used in GSM/GPRS. For example for duration of a voice call, for the amount of data transmitted (eg for streaming, file download, browsing) and for an event (one-off charge).

- It shall be possible for a network operator to charge its users for activities while roaming so that the home network will get the capability to raise service charges depending on the roamed to network, e.g. because of inter operator charges for the use of service capabilities within the visited network which will in general depend on the serving network. The ability to supply all the necessary information for all the charging options will depend on the capability of the visited network. For service capabilities which are provided by the home network, however, it is required that the charging information is collected to allow to identify the serving network of the served subscriber.

- It shall be possible for charging to be applied based on location, presence, push services etc

- It shall be possible to charge using pre-pay, post-pay, advice of charge, 3^rd party charging techniques.

- It shall be possible for the home network to apply different tariffs to national calls and short messages established/sent by their subscribers while roaming in their Home PLMN depending on whether or not the called subscriber’s Home PLMN equals the calling subscriber’s Home PLMN, rather than on the called subscriber’s MSISDN.