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Frens Jan Rumph
Profile: I am a researcher, technical consultant and software engineer based in Holland. I have specialized in Charging, Accounting and Billing architectures. From both a technical point of view (IETF, 3GPP, etc) and a business point of view (TM Forum, GBA).
Main interests: Telecom, Charging, Accounting, Billing, Service Orientation, Software Architectures, Software Engineering
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Evolutionary Innovation and Service Monetisation
Tsahi Levent-Levi posted an article on VoiP Survivor about the AMS and its (lack of) relation with the IMS. Furthermore he talks about the innovative nature of the AMS, expressing his hope that the AMS will not be based on stitching and patching of existing protocols. Finally he comments that: “There are those who believe that IMS is a network designed to make money, while AMS is a network designed to provide services to users”. I hope he doesn’t mean that I form part of the former group, although I’m afraid that …
AMS may possibly bring something new and fresh, I really like the focus on the service/application. Especially the idea of cooperation between end-user devices, the Jini vision comes alive again. As for the comparison between AMS and IMS, since AMS is still in its infancy it is indeed hard to compare the two. But they do overlap! And I think that therefore alone they should be compared, over and over and over. Too much money and time has been invested in SIP, XCAP and such that the overlap can not be ignored.
Also I have my fingers crossed that it stays really free of too much vendor influences. A completely academic standardisation probably wouldn’t be the best of ideas either, since a standard is for a big part meant for industrial use. A balance in this is required, in order for a standard to be successfully adopted.
As for the charging and billing stuff, it is perhaps not the sexiest thing to talk about. But if companies are investing in the development of new technology, and are putting large amounts of money in the day-to-day management and operations of services that are using that technology, someone will need to pay for that. The IP backbone and operator networks don’t run and power themselves. And phones and such still don’t grow of trees.
I’m not saying here that business models might not change, think for instance of sponsorship and such. I also think that a customer is certainly willing to pay for what he perceives as value (instead of distance times duration)!
Furthermore if technologies/networks/services are to be monetized, you should see charging, billing and settlement as an opportunity to further increase the customer experience! For instance: a customer is surely wont mind hearing that he/she received something for free, where he/she normally pays for. So why let him/her know at the end of the month on the bill, instead of immediately after or even during service usage!
To end my ramble on charging/billing: there are too many examples of projects where the order handling, provisioning, billing and other non-service customer-facing processes came last, but hugely impacted on the success of a product! Operators usually get more media attention when they screw up with their bills then when they run a cool new services.
Concluding: I applaud and follow with great anticipation any developments that push the state-of-the-art in new (multimedia) services! Be it research or industry standardisation. I however don’t expect a big-bang of mind-blowing unseen services and a customer value that has yet to be seen before.
Frens Jan Rumph