Real Time Rating System – SK Telecom
Altibase enables SK Telecom to bill per-second, per-individual in real time, eliminating collection problems and reducing customer discontent. Altibase is deployed to host recent data as a front end to Oracle which is used as the repository for hosting historical data.
- Use Case
- Billing, Call Detail Record (CDR) processing
- Current Customer
- China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus
- Industry
- Telecommunications
Who
Problem
SK Telecom’s billing service suffered from major delays as the number of subscribers grew substantially.
With growing demands on the legacy system, database-related TCO became progressively onerous.
The company was unable to detect and shut off service when prepaid balances were depleted.
The inability to accurately detect customer balances resulted in negative balances and uncollected funds.
Solution
Results
SK Telecom is now able to precisely check and act on customer balances.[2]
It also has the capacity to process customer usage on a per-second basis. This dramatic shift provides substantial savings to customers.[3] When this feature was first introduced, SK Telecom was able to capitalize on this newly added billing prowess to spearhead a significant marketing campaign. Other telecommunications companies followed suit.
Revenue losses resulting from undetectable free usage and uncollected negative balances have been eliminated.
Customers have access to their balances in real time and without error.
Customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention and acquisition are enhanced.
The company has the ability to efficiently integrate billing services for subscribers using multiple services.
Technical Details – Real Time Rating System
High Performance
An increasing number of subscribers and the introduction of new services resulted in an unmanageable number of database transactions, making batch-mode operation impossible. Furthermore, new services (i.e. prepaid plan) came with additional requirements demanding SK Telecom to detect and manage usage balances in real time, which was impossible with the legacy system. SK Telecom could only achieve a throughput of 150 million calls a day while system resource utilization was maxed out.
SK Telecom designed its new RTRS using a combination of Altibase in-memory database and Oracle’s on-disk DBMS. Altibase was deployed in its in-memory database mode to host recent data (up to 3-month old) as a front-end to an on-disk Oracle database which was used as the repository for hosting historical data.
Data integration between Altibase and Oracle was achieved by using Altibase’s OraAdapter tool. The new system allowed billing and rating processes to execute in real time. This real time process was critical for prepaid services since SK Telecom had to accurately detect negative customer balances. In addition, the new system achieved a throughput of 450 million calls a day while reducing system resource utilization to 50%.
Open Platform
SKT standards-compliant architecture allowed access to a broader talent pool at lower cost.
HA
[2] The new system is 5.3 times faster than the legacy system with the added benefits of HA and replication.
[3] Per-second charging scheme saves SK Telecom’s customers an average of $14.5 million per annum.