Convergent charging market to reach $4.2 billion in 2017, said Infonetics Research.

Growth will be coming from an increase in licenses in emerging telecom markets and services spending in developed markets.

Infonetics Research said convergent charging spending is generally not occurring hand-in-hand with LTE deployments; instead, LTE is acting as an indirect driver.

M2M transactions are expected to eventually far exceed human transactions on the mobile network, and Infonetics anticipates that most operators will implement new charging stacks-rather than extending existing systems-to support this new line of business.

Over the next 12-18 months, there will be a greater emphasis on convergent charging solutions that include self-care capabilities, enabling subscribers to change plans, add bolt-ons, and monitor usage, gaining more control over their services and spending.

Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research, said that growth in the convergent charging market continues, driven in part by a wave of replacement activity as operators swap out their first-generation charging systems for more scalable and flexible solutions.

The telecom industry is expecting that LTE rollouts will further accelerate the market over the next few years. Mobile operators will want to capitalize on LTE’s bigger pipe via new services and pricing models that better tie the bandwidth consumed to the price being charged.

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