Telecommunications Carrier Billing Errors - Why Can't They Get It Right?

In such trying economic times, corporations are leaning on their telecommunication providers to generate an accurate accounting and bill of their monthly activity.

• A troubling thought comes from research published by the Gartner Group in which they estimate that in the next 12 months, $13 Billion in over charges by carriers will be generated on corporate telecommunications bills.
• Even more surprisingly, less than 2% of these errors will ever be identified or claimed.

Regardless of which service a company is utilizing, traditional voice or VoIP, these common telecommunications billing errors can occur in several areas. Isn't running a business hard enough? And now, for companies to keep what is theirs, it is necessary for companies to become a part-time auditor.
Interestingly, only an estimated 50% percent of companies audit their phone bills looking to reclaim their share of the $13 Billion in overcharges. One may ask themselves... Does my company have the resources, let alone the expertise to audit monthly telecommunications billing problems, and how is it possible that carriers can't create an error free bill? The answer is, they can, but there are many challenges for carriers to overcome. The good news is - there are good solutions out there for companies to get back what is theirs.
The primary reason telecommunication companies have such a difficult time billing accurately is the evolution of the industries technologies. When the industry transported calls over analog circuits the services were not complicated and therefore easy to bill.
The transformation to a digital world has been great for the corporate customer. Phone services have become feature rich and voice traffic can be carried over the same lines as data traffic. Once digital established its foot holds in telecom it also spawned many new technologies. In the very competitive world of telecommunications, carriers had to adopt these new technologies to maintain their competitive place in the industry. Simply put, the carriers billing platforms are not structured to adopt the intricacies of new services.
So, are feature rich services worth $13 Billion dollars and will these issues be resolved in the near future? Carriers still face the challenges of evolving their billing systems at the same aggressive pace that is necessary to stay competitive. The Carriers choices are either the "bandaid" approach or create a new billing platform from scratch. Both solutions are expensive and there are many opinions on the best migration path.
Companies can take advantage of the feature rich services digital provides without paying into the $13 Billion dollar pool of overcharges. There are service providers out there with proprietary billing systems that provide accurate, high quality and reliable billing for data and voice services. These companies have designed their billing systems for the continually evolving industry.

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