Bills are the life-line of Telecom and Internet Service Providers. Most of us as users of these services receive bills after a billing cycle, which is typically every month, or sometimes every two months. So when you see a bill from your Service Provider, we normally assume that the money that we pay goes completely to the Service Provider. But no single service provider can cover all geographies in Domestic and Overseas and also cover all types of services, Wireline, Cellular. Ever wondered how these Telecom Service Providers "bill" each other. The problem is not so complex in India today with each of the Cellular Service Providers having their own territory and primarily interconnecting with either DoT or MTNL. This problem will grow exponentially as the Government of India has opened up the Domestic Long Distance market to new operators. With the Overseas market opening up in the future the complexities will increase.

Lets take the example of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), a "Pancha Ratna" and currently the only operator that provides Overseas Communication Services to customers in India. VSNL is required to settle with various operators across the globe like AT&T in the US, British Telecom in UK and Hong Kong Telecom in Hong Kong. And for each operator that VSNL connects to, there is an agreement between the two parties on how they will settle their respective charges. So as the number of operators that VSNL connects to grow and as the terms of the agreements with each operator change, it brings in a need for an Interconnect Billing which is also known as Wholesale Billing, as opposed to Retail Billing which is the term for billing individual consumers. This problem is further compounded as even VSNL cannot afford to have agreements with very small operators, while they are committed to connecting the Indian customers to the remotest corner of the world. In such cases VSNL "settles" their bills with an operator, who in turn has an agreement with the smaller operator. For an operator like VSNL, whose major source of revenue is through these "Interconnections", it is a highly mission critical application.

As such complexities grew, VSNL felt a need for moving to a State-of-the-Art Interconnect Settlement System (ISS) based on International Standards. Tata Infotech partnered with Intec Systems of UK to bring this solution. The ISS is also interfaced with the Financial Accounting System module of SAP.

An Interconnect Settlement System provides for the following functionalities:

• -- The most important functionality is to maintain the interconnect agreements between Service Providers, which is also known as the Reference Data
• -- It must also allow for the creation of the invoice billing statement
• -- It should settle for and reconcile the network usage
• -- Provide for a drill-down facility to summarize individual call records
• -- Provide adequate security controls
• -- Allow for functions like error reporting, audit log, reporting and analysis capabilities and MIS.

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