Prepaid Billing In Ecs; How Ecs Prepaid Billing Works - Cisco ASR 5000 Series Administration Manual

▀ Accounting and Charging Interfaces
Important:
ECS also supports FBC and TBC methods for postpaid billing. For more information on FBC and TBC in ECS, see the
Time and Flow-based Bearer Charging in ECS

Prepaid Billing in ECS

In a prepaid environment, the subscribers pay for service prior to use. While the subscriber is using the service, credit is
deducted from subscriber's account until it is exhausted or call ends. The prepaid charging server is responsible for
authorizing network nodes to grant access to the user, as well as grant quotas for either time connected or volume used.
It is up to the network node to track the quota use, and when these use quotas run low, the network node sends a request
to the prepaid server for more quota.
If the user has not used up the purchased credit, the server grants quota and if no credit is available to the subscriber the
call will be disconnected. ECS and DCCA manage this functionality by providing the ability to set up quotas for
different services.
Prepaid quota in ECS is implemented using RADIUS and DCCA as shown in the following figure.

How ECS Prepaid Billing Works

The following figure illustrates a typical prepaid billing environment with system running ECS.
Figure 9.
▄ Cisco ASR 5x00 Enhanced Charging Services Administration Guide
70
G-CDRs and eG-CDRs are only available in UMTS networks.
Prepaid Billing Scenario with ECS
section.
Enhanced Charging Service Overview