The 21st century will see new lifestyles that will be propelled by the advances in digital wireless communication. 5G or 5th generation systems offer the potential for a myriad of new content based services to take advantage of the cost effective high speed data services.

5th generation systems are different from 2nd and 3rd generation systems as a result of two factors that enable these new content based services to be delivered cost effectively to customers. These two factors are Packet Data transmission (Internet Protocol or IP) and High Bit Rate transmission which allows new services such as video and high quality audio broadcast services.

While customers of telecom operators need not worry about how 4G communication technologies work it becomes mission critical for telecom operators to have an underlying technology platform that can handle the challenges of operating in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G environments.

The heart of this underlying technology platform is Mediation which sits in between the very complex physical network of switches from multiple vendors and the billing system. Mediation deals with incompatible usage data from the complex physical network performs one or more of the following functions such as collection, forwarding, aggregation, correlation, consolidation, enrichment, validation, filtration, processing and de-duplication. Mediation also checks for errors, provides audit trails and archives the usage data.

Most telecom operators today will be faced with the challenge of upgrading this underlying platform called mediation since apart from the above complexities there is an additional challenge of convergence. Telecom operators are now offering a range of options such as fixed line, wireless, multiple billing methods such as post paid or pre-paid, multiple services such as data services, video services, audio services, financial services, etc. Customers expect a single bill from the telecom operator for all these multiple services.

Hence convergent billing has become an important requirement for telecom operators. Such convergence also imposes challenges on the underlying mediation platform since it must be designed and architected for real time convergence especially in the case of prepaid billing.

tecways noticed very early the need for highly flexible, scalable, and real-time-based mediation platforms to control advanced 3G and 4G mobile services.

tecways believes that the success of operators depends on the ability to bill contents and services in a highly complex interdependent environment of MVNO's, content providers and innovative operator services....

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