VoIP Billing, Features & Benefits
A2Billing works in conjunction with Asterisk, the underlying telephony engine, to ensure that customers can only use make calls within their credit limit. There are numerous options for billing, from connection and disconnection charges, variable incremental billing as well as step charges based on the duration of the call. Furthermore there are options for packages of free minutes and free calls.
A2Billing is closely integrated with the underlying telephony engine to ensure that customers may only make calls for which they have credit, and only to the destinations prescribed by the A2Billing Administrator.
Although it is possible to take CDR (Call Data Records) and pass them to a company for mediation and fulfilment, one of the downsides to this is that is never known until the rating is complete how much traffic has been passed by the customer, and thus there are potentially no limits to the usage so bill shock can be a problem.
With A2Billing, the available balance is checked every time a call is made, so that a customer can only make calls to the limit of their balance.
Having said this, there are numerous billing features which allows the A2Billing Administrator to create imaginative and profitable products and services, including subscription based services, stepped billing and minutes bundles. For a more detailed list of features see http://www.star2billing.com/solutions/a2billing-features/
Providing Voice over IP services to customers is not only about price, although it should be noted that calls, particularly to international destinations are often cheaper than the incumbent PSTN operator, it is also about choice and flexibility.
Recently introduced is A-Leg billing that allows provisioning and delivery of DID. (Telephone Numbers) so that DID can be billed on the ingress leg as well as the egress. Features have been included to provide for out-payments to customers who run Premium Rated Non Geographic numbers, as well as charging for Toll-free and geographical DID from numerous providers around the world.
With the management and control that a Star2Billing Switch gives, this can pay dividends in disaster recovery, in that customer’s DID can be re-pointed quickly and easily so that calls can be handled by cellphones, another office, or simply sent to voicemail.
