Your telecom billing for $1 per customer!
Posted by: Rei on: December 5, 2008
As you can see on my previous blog entries, I’ve been working on a new affordable telecom billing system for the last couple of months, and I’m expecting to be done at some point in the middle of next year.
I’ve been receiving lots of emails, asking if there is an alternative telecom billing solution that can be used in the meantime, so i decided to offer what I’ve been doing for a couple of telecom companies that recently approached me: I will host a database with your customer’s billing information and the call detail record (CDR) for every month, and then generate monthly invoices in a PDF format. Then, at the beginning of each month (or at your best convenience), all your telecom bills will be available for download from my secured ftp site.
Basically, all you need to do is send me the call usage from your telecom provider every month, and i will do the billing job for you. I will charge only 1 dollar for each customer you have.
Feel free to contact me at website@easytelecombilling.com if you are interested or if you have any questions.
Telecom CDR/Billing Software in the works!
Posted by: Rei on: November 14, 2008
As i mentioned in my previous posts, my focus during this quarter and next will be to finish an easy, user friendly, consulting free, and affordable Telecom (CDR or UDR based) Billing Software that will make life way easier for small interconnect or telecom companies that need to bill their customer telephone usage.
Telecom Billing Software Project Milestones
About a month ago i started the data layer of this project, which is almost done (I should be finished by the end of this moth).
As you can see in the screenshot; the next step will be to develop the user interface (windows, forms, etc) so beta users can take a look at what the product will look like and provide feedback for potential enhancements, even before the release date!
I’ll be posting screenshots of the user interface as i work on them so you could follow up on the ongoing work. So stay tuned 
In the meantime, I’m offering to host a telecom billing service where all you need to do is send me the call usage from your telecom provider every month, and i will do the billing job for you. I will charge only 1 dollar for each customer you have.
Check my latest post for more info on this service or feel free to contact me at website@easytelecombilling.com
My Vision
Posted by: Rei on: November 11, 2008
When i first started building a billing system for the company i used to work for (5 or 6 years ago) i didn’t have a good idea of the theory behind telecom billing (They don’t really teach you that at school). I basically had to develop my own theories and do the trial-error thing.
I needed to have a database that included customer contact info, services to be billed (telephone lines, PRI, ADSL, etc) and rates for long distance calls, so i set up a MySQL database server with tables that contained this data. Then got myself a reporting tool that will generate reports based on that info; and those reports were going to be the actual invoices to be sent to the customers.
Simple, right?…
Well, it was not!…
Getting the reports to capture the customer information and to show the services provided and the charges associated with them was pretty simple, but to charge each individual long distance call based on specific rates depending on the country/city the customer was calling to was a real challenge. You have to parse the country code from the originating telephone number and then match it with the proper rate. Country codes are all different, but some times a country code contains part of another code which makes things way more complicated.
On top of that, there is the provider CDR (Call Detail Record) which is the long distance usage for all your customers, and that usually comes in a .csv file. We had 3 different providers at the time, all with different CDR formats, so i had to spend hours every month in order to modify this files and make a ‘master’ one with a standard format that my reports (Invoices) could read.
Now you see how complicated things are when it comes to Telecom Billing. Specially when you want to bill services like Long Distance. And belief me, i looked around for a software that could do all this at affordable prices, and all i could find were these consulting companies that will charge you literally thousands of dollars to build a system like this for you. There were a couple of softwares (which i am going to review in an upcoming post) that did all this, but they were so complicated (and still expensive) that you would end up spending an insane amount of resources and consulting fees just to set it up and get it up an running.
My idea is to develop an application that you can download, install and it’s all ready to start billing your customers. As simple as that! You throw your CDR’s in, set up (or import) your customers. Press a button and that’s it. Your invoices are ready. The computer will do the hard work i was talking about, not you.
Hello world!
Posted by: Rei on: November 1, 2008
Welcome to my weblog. Before i actually became a software guru, i used to work in a telecommunications company that resells telephone lines ad long distance.
I was lucky enough to start working there just when they started providing long distance service to their customers so i took on the task of generating invoices from a Call Detail Record or CDR (in our case was a simple .csv file) so we could charge customers for their long distance usage. After 3 years of working with them, i quit that job so i could direct my career into a more “Software Developer” direction, but i kept maintaining and running their Telecom Billing system. In fact, it has been two years since i left and i still do their Telecom Billing, which actually has became my side business.
In all these years i’ve been looking for Telecom Billing software out there, but all i could find were these enterprise level monsters that could keep you busy for months just to set up the application. There are even companies that will charge you thousands of dollars for developing and maintaining a system like the one i made! and that’s the main purpose of this blog: i want to discuss and share the frustration of telecom resellers that can’t find a clean, lightweight and efficient application to bill their customers, and actually help them out based on my years of experience.
So stay tuned (you can subscribe to my RSS feed) and leave a comment if you wish to share your story or to ask me any questions. There are also a few ways to reach me in my Contact page
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- Aniruddha Dutta: Please provide me your telephone no. Can you also help me with the pre-requisites of a good Billing system
