There's No Ducking the Bill

As ISPs deploy converged services, they will need ever more complex billing software, and their billing relationships will become more complex.

by ISP-Planet Staff [November 18, 2004]

Cupertino, Calif.-based billing software provider Portal is announcing today that it has won Japanese broadband ISP Softbank BB as a customer.

Bhaskar Gorti, Portal's senior vice president of global accounts, marketing, and alliances, says that Japan is the world's most advanced IP market. "Softbank BB was looking for a solution that could support targeted services for the sophisticated Japanese consumer."

Based in Tokyo, Softbank BB offers VoIP, fixed wireless roaming, and IPTV in addition to DSL. The company's ADSL service offers speeds of up to 26 Mbps downstream.

As large ISPs move into IP services, their billing providers must innovate to keep up. Liam Maxwell, Portal's senior director of product management, notes, "convergence is happening across many technologies: POTS, IPTV, cellular, VoIP, and more. Traditionally, ISP billing consisted of 'bearer services' that simply measured the number of bytes transported. With IPTV and VoIP, you need to have a large product catalog and you need to be able to charge differently for different types of program."

Gorti says that in a converged world, large ISPs have a tremendous opportunity to leverage their customer base by providing access to content providers. "In cases like the Yahoo!-Softbank BB relationship, our software will feed into the billing software of content providers, but many content providers don't have a billing infrastructure. Those content providers that lack a billing infrastructure can leverage Softbank's Portal infrastructure. They can use the Softbank infrastructure to drive revenue from content."

ISPs worry about exposing their customers to other companies. ISPs want to retain the billing relationship. An advanced billing system will enable ISPs to keep the billing information and be able to derive recurring revenue from any content provider selling services to their customers.

"ISPs want to be a complete solution provider to content providers," says Gorti. "They want to let the content providers focus on astrology or weather or game development."

The ISP industry has had a rough ride in the recent past, but Gorti believes he sees a service-based recovery. "Back in the day, we had 19 DSL carrier customers in the U.S.," he says. "18 of them died, with Covad the sole survivor. Post Internet bubble, the IP space is finding a business model. The market is waking up to the fact that IP is real, and IP is here."

Portal, he says has been ready for the new new IP world for some time. "IP services have always been our core competence. Companies like Softbank BB are doing basic stuff with us, and they're using our infrastructure that captures all of their subscriber relationships, and they're billing for access to voice and data and content over DSL, and, finally, as users consume different broadband services, they're completing payment settlements with third parties such as game providers."

Big changes in the ISP world, caused by convergence, mean big changes for billing providers too. Portal, a top of the line billing services provider (prices start at $100,000), is as changed by convergence as its customers.

— End