Every other transaction by that subscriber is captured as well, such as e-mail, instant
messaging, exchanging files with other subscribers, and even initiating video
conferences. Why is this different from today??™s model? Because today this would have
to be accomplished by several different platforms capturing data from many different
entities within the network. Worse, many different billing formats are required to support
multimedia. There lacks within the industry one format for billing records to fit
any type of communications service.
This is perhaps the single most daunting issue operators face when moving to a new
architecture such as IMS. How do you convert all of the back-office systems and billing
architectures in such a way as to support the many different services you are implementing,
without deploying multiple systems and billing formats? The IMS provides
a single reference point where all of this data is captured, correlated, and distributed
to billing systems for charging. But more importantly, the IMS introduces a new billing
format supporting all forms of media, enabling operators to implement one billing
platform for all of their media services.
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162 Chapter 7
Introduction to Charging
Charging in an IMS is supported through the DIAMETER protocol and a whole new
charging architecture. The various network elements within the IMS that are responsible
for charging, support the DIAMETER protocol through various interfaces so
that charging detail records (CDRs) can be collected for any services rendered.
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