[Spce-user] billing integration

Andreas Granig agranig at sipwise.com
Mon Nov 24 08:58:09 EST 2014


Hi,

That might be one approach, but at the Kamailio world, Dan Bogos
presented http://www.cgrates.org/, which is supposed to be a real-time
rating engine.

We've never had a look at that, but it sounds interesting enough as it
seems to support prepaid and should be open-source, and is designed to
work with Kamailio.

Any real-life feedback of someone using this would be really cool.

Andreas

On 11/21/2014 02:55 PM, Derrick Bradbury wrote:
> Re-reading this, looks like what you really want you'll have to work at
> the Kamailio level...
> 
> http://kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/cnxcc.html
> 
> Doing this you'll break automatic updates of the SipCE system. You'll
> have to setup a custom template and make your mods to that.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Sebastien Lesimple [slesimple at laposte.net]
> *Sent:* Friday, November 21, 2014 3:39 AM
> *To:* Derrick Bradbury; Theo
> *Cc:* Spce-user
> *Subject:* Re: [Spce-user] billing integration
> 
> Nop, no 2 seconds integration for the prepay feature with SPCE.
> 
> However, you might want to reconsider handling your prepay (traffic
> shut-off) at the billing system level, because there might be a flaw in
> the approach.
> I am far from being an expert on the prepay stuff so don't take it as a
> word of expert, but based on my investigations on the subject, it is not
> that simple to get things clean...
> 
> You would have to check in real time the number of concurrent calls and
> running cost for any given customers and maitain a running balance and
> match it againts the credit limit.
> (a cron to check the running cost every sec on every call for the
> computer guys approache, or in the signaling/voice strean for the
> network guys, or something alike).
> 
> So either you use Freeside do it does it "live", which might be quite
> some work to get to a very clean solution;
> Or you import CDRs from SPCE, and then you have an issue as SPCE
> produces CDR Files once every 5 hours or once it reaches a define number
> of calls, not great if you have wholesale prepaid clients...
> 
> Bottom line, I would use the SPCE individual billing plan and fraud
> detection to control the prepay part and Freeside to produce invoices,
> account for the payments (Credit Cards, Wire etc...), get your customers
> slef service for invoices, CDR files etc...
> And unlock the account in SPCE via the APIs once the credit is applyed
> in Freeside, see the idea?
> 
> Now there might be better billing solutions out there so don't take that
> approach as the best one, it is just the way I would do it do get up and
> running real quick with limited resources...
> 
> Seb.
> 
> Le 21/11/2014 06:11, Derrick Bradbury a écrit :
>>
>> One other one to look at is http://killbill.io 
>>
>> Just started to look at that one...
>>
>> On Nov 20, 2014 10:53 PM, Theo <axessofficetheo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> Thanks all for the input. Pity that nothing came of the development at
>> the time. 
>>
>> I will investigate freeside although the statement:
>>
>> "So if you have inhouse qualified people it might do the trick"
>> worries me a little, because we don't :-).
>>
>> But let's have a look at it to see what it will take to have something
>> developed. At this point, in terms of integration all we would need
>> really is CDR import, some way of disabling an account upon reaching
>> of credit limit in an automated way and automated emails to a client
>> that they are reaching their credit limit (which would be our way of
>> doing prepaid). We are having a look at the pro version currently
>> which would have prepaid, but either way we would need it integrated.
>> Those are really the only 3 must haves for us to be able to use
>> sipwise fully.
>>
>> Sebastien - to achieve those 3, would that be fairly involved or "2
>> seconds work"?
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Jeremy Ward <jward01 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:jward01 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Not only is it a hole in many open-source projects, its a hole in
>>     many lower end of the price range closed source products ($1-$2/Mo
>>     per seat/line)
>>
>>     For instance, VoipNOW does real time rating, but to use billing
>>     you have to use their crappy integrated "Automation" product. It
>>     comes with a customer facing front end (even automated deployment
>>     of subscribers) but its not even smart enough to allow an end user
>>     to select a DID in their region during signup. You still have to
>>     manually assign a DID, unless you want it to pick one from your
>>     pool which could be anywhere.
>>
>>     If you manually create an account through the admin portal,
>>     there's no way to bill what you created through the Automation
>>     component.
>>
>>     What's more, is that customers have to log into two different
>>     interfaces, one to pay their bill, and another to look at their
>>     individual charged calls and then run a report, it's not even
>>     presented on the bill and there's no way to integrate the two
>>     without building something from scratch that uses their API.
>>
>>     The vendors answer: use our API, or buy Parallels Automation (at
>>     about $90K USD, plus a quarterly revenue share).
>>
>>     Whoever solves this huge hole and does so under one product, low
>>     cost or open-source, is going to get some serious market share.
>>
>>
>>     Jeremy D. Ward, CWNE
>>     (954) 661-4965 <tel:%28954%29%20661-4965>
>>
>>     On Nov 20, 2014 11:13 AM, "Oren Yehezkely" <orenyny at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:orenyny at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         Theo,
>>
>>         To use either one jBilling or blesta requires the community to
>>         invest, but nobody was willing to chip in.
>>         This is a big hole with many open source projects, but this is
>>         the sad situation.
>>
>>
>>
>>         On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Abel Alejandro
>>         <aalejandro at alliedtechnologygrouppr.com
>>         <mailto:aalejandro at alliedtechnologygrouppr.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             I use freeside - http://www.freeside.biz/
>>
>>             Not as feature complete as jbilling but gets the job done.
>>
>>             Abel.
>>
>>
>>             On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 7:26 AM, Theo
>>             <axessofficetheo at gmail.com
>>             <mailto:axessofficetheo at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>                 Hi all
>>
>>                 There was a thread at one point about integrating the
>>                 CE version with billing platforms. Jbilling was
>>                 mentioned and Blesta if I remember correctly.
>>
>>                 Are there any suggestions for platforms that people
>>                 use and have working nicely with spce? Jbilling of
>>                 course is fantastic but way out of bounds pricewise.
>>                 Blesta is not suitable for our environment.
>>
>>                 We haven't use sipwise yet for rating and billing for
>>                 this reason but are quite keen to start using it for
>>                 that as well.
>>
>>                 Thanks a lot for any input.
>>
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>>
>>
>>             -- 
>>             /Abel Alejandro/
>>             787 586 8313 <tel:787%20586%208313> | 787 705 0555
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>>
>>             400 Calle Calaf 477
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>>             <mailto:aalejandro at alliedtechnologygrouppr.com>
>>
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