CIOs explore solutions to control billing fraud and improve revenue

CIOs at telecom operators face challenging task in controlling fraud in their billing process that can impact several billions in terms of revenue.
Fraud presents a big business problem for mobile network operators (MNOs), costing nearly $30 billion in 2017, equivalent to 1.27 percent of global telecom revenues, according to the 2017 Fraud Loss Survey by Communications Fraud Control Association.

The telecom billing market is expected to reach $20.99 billion by 2026 from $8.98 billion in 2017 — growing at a CAGR of 9.8 percent.

GSMA says mobile operator revenue will reach $1138 billion in 2025 from $1033 billion in 2018, with an annual average growth rate of 1.4 percent between 2018 and 2025. Hence, the top priority for decision makers at telecom operators is the reduction in revenue loss due to billing fraud.

Addition of new revenue streams is also a focus area for telecom CEOs. 5G and 5G-driven IoT are growth areas. IoT revenue will increase at an average annual rate of 23 percent to 2025 to $1.1 trillion. But the contribution of connectivity will be declining from 9 percent of total IoT revenue in 2018 to 5 percent in 2025.

Security issues in IoT devices will pose further revenue challenges to CIOs. Security product firm McAfee says it has uncovered two new vulnerabilities within connected devices — BoxLock and Mr. Coffee brand coffee maker with Wemo — that allow hackers access to the personal lives of consumers.

Telecom analytics solutions company Subex says its revenue assurance solutions assist telecom operators in reducing revenue losses due to billing fraud.

The company’s real-time revenue assurance – powered by analytics — focuses on minimizing the time gap between fault detection and reconciliation. The RA technology enables telecom service providers to detect billing frauds and take immediate action within hours of data inception, said Subex.

CSG announced CSG Detect, a software as a service (SaaS) solution will assist CIOs and other decision makers in detecting and notifying real-time of potential fraud in their billing process.

The CSG Detect solution provides active and passive testing that enables detection of fraud. The cloud-based solution utilizes technologies including Hadoop, a big data technology, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning to analyze near real-time traffic.

CSG said it is offering the Wholesale software as a service (SaaS) product as an end-to-end solution, or a customized solution based on business need.

CSG delivers revenue management, customer experience and digital monetization solutions to Arrow Electronics, AT&T, Airtel, Charter, Comcast, DISH, Eastlink, iflix, MTN, TalkTalk, Telefonica, Telstra and Verizon.

Optiva says its Charging Engine — the best OSS / BSS solution for telecoms – ensures customizable charging and policy management with reliability.

Optiva leverages Google Cloud Platform services such as Cloud Spanner to increase the database read/write speed of its Optiva Charging Engine to telcos by 10x, delivering the lowest TCO.

5 billion people across the globe or more than 60 percent of the population will be mobile internet subscribers by 2015. The growth in devices available on networks will pose more challenges to IT, billing and revenue teams at mobile operators.

Baburajan K