building blocks
    real-time rating
    provisioning
    replenishment
    customer relationship
    add-on capabilities
administration
support
infrastructure

real-time rating

Tri-plex Prepaid supports a virtually unlimited number of rate plans that can be monitored in real-time, including usage, flat fees, units, discounts, promotions, and rates based on many factors, singly or in combination. The rating engine moves easily between voice and data events and supports calls that span different rates.

Check out the rating building blocks you can use to construct
your prepaid offering:

Prepaid usage includes airtime, transactions, and subscriptions. Airtime includes inbound or outbound calling, local, long distance or international calling, on-net, off-net or landline calling. Transactions include DA calls, SMS messages, ringtones and other data services. Subscriptions include voice mail, call waiting, or insurance.

Telescopic rating calculates the rate for each subsequent unit on a telephone call at a lower rate than that of the prior unit (e.g., if the first minute is rated at $0.20, the second minute is rated at $0.15, the third minute is rated at $0.10 and subsequent minutes are rated at $0.05 each).

Per-second billing means that When a call is rated, the time of the call is rounded to a predetermined fraction of a minute (e.g., round to per second, to per 10 seconds, etc.) and the call is charged based on that time.

The multi-rate rating function can rate one call across multiple replenishments with varying rates and expirations.

Special rating features include "anytime" minutes, nights, weekends and holiday rates, free call days, or usage credits.

Buckets enables multiple balances to be maintained within one prepaid account. These separate balances fund specific services such as long distance or ringtone downloads. Tri-plex Prepaid then separately tracks usage of these services and decrements the resulting charges from the correct balances within the account in real-time. When a bucket balance begins to approach depletion, the subscriber is prompted for a refill but all other services are unaffected.

Tri-plex Prepaid can bill for data downloaded from the Internet such as ring tones, games, and information alerts and can bill for SMS service on a subscription basis for unlimited messages.

User Groups allow subscribers to form groups with special features and special rates between group members. For example, a family could form a User Group and enjoy special rates for calls within the Group.

Corporate Manager is a set of Tri-plex Prepaid features combined specifically to satisfy the needs of the business customer. By utilizing User Groups and other rating features (e.g., special rates within the business's phones; charging to the business during the day and to the individual at night), you can offer business customers unique replenishment options, customized rate plans, and customized calling options.

With Roaming, Tri-plex offers multiple ways of providing control and rating of calls made by and delivered to roaming subscribers in an ISUP/TCAP environment for CDMA/TDMA switches. In some cases these methods can be combined into a single customized package.

get creative

Want to create an offering for teens that allows ringtones to be funded separately from voice services? How about one that always allows teens a free call home? Or one where all family members can talk to one another as much as they want for a fixed rate? Or one that has some or all of those rating features?

Maybe you want to offer a fixed rate plan to businesses, where the business funds daytime phone calls and the employee funds evening phone calls.

Or maybe you want to do something completely different, like offer a service that rewards the customer for talking a lot by reducing the rate charged the longer the call goes on or even providing usage credits.

how it's done

Tri-plex's rating engine uses four components to accomplish its voice rating and data billing:

Carrier business rules defining the services offered and the rates that apply
Subscriber information in Tri-plex's Stored Value Manager
The type of event (e.g., the type of call or data transaction)
Rating logic

The rating engine puts all this information together to determine the cost to apply to the event.