Telecos have a very sophisticated understanding of the difference between accounting for resource allocation and control and for extraction of consumer surplus and provide some of the most dramatic illustrations of the irrationality of capitalist price mechanisms fettering the development of the productive forces while also being seen as one of the most technically advanced and dynamic sectors.

The primary function of telecos is to prevent people communicating by extracting a rent for doing so in much the same way that landlords role is to prevent people using land. This is quite generally completely misunderstood, even by people whose conceptual framework would not lead them to believe that landlords add value to productive processes by contributing access to natural resources rather than extracting surplus value by restricting access to natural resources.

Useful to study in conjunction with the theory of rent in Capital volume 3. Note also that teleco investments in actual physical infrastructure are often a sort of "improvement to land" (adding telecommunication facilities like adding roads etc) and with comparable issues concerning "property rights" (including spectrum allocation as well as legislated rights to use private property). Also teleco R&D and even more obviously silly "intellectual property" issues.

However stuff here will mainly be on details of extracting consumer surplus.

The "3rd generation partner project", 3gpp is a sort of industry coop between major telecos and equipment suppliers involved in "3g" (and later) mobile technology and have big plans for competing with both fixed line telecos and isps and content providers including convergence with broadcast media.

They publish extremely detailed engineering specifications to ensure interworking as essential for both a competitive equipment supply industry and for mobile phones to work at all in both national and global environments where they move between areas where the physical infrastructure is controlled by different telecos and provide mixtures of services originating from different suppliers, both teleco and external, in a highly "competitive" market that relies on transparently shared resources to extract consumer surplus from highly differentiated market niches and keeps very close track of individual consumption both for marketing analysis and state mandated surveillance requirements.

It is easiest to locate the particular specs required via the web descriptions where we find the 32 series on OAMP & Charging discussed below.

A useful starting point is Online Charging System (OCS) architecture study

In this case the link for the latest version "6.1.0" works to download directly.

However sometimes login is required but a more easily accessible version can be found by clicking on the link for the file directory containing that document number 3GPP TR 32.815 The number 32.815 can be used to deduce the relevant file names to more rapidly download multiple docs of interest via web or corresponding ftp.

All versions of the 32 series are here

The latest for all series in all self contained complete sets for a generation ("release") of the 3gpp standards are a bit confusing as most of interest currently seem to be in release 6

That is the place to go to actually download quickly, by mentally treating the .zip file listed as 32815-610.zip as being the one containing the .doc for the latest version (which merelyhappens to be 6.1.0 shown as -610) for TR 32 815 (shown as 32815-).

So now I will just refer to TR 32 815 or similar numbers without a link since even though I may mention a specific version number that I was looking at it is usually better to download the latest version and they are updated quite frequently.

The overview diagram for OCS from TS 32.296 v6.2.0 is also in TR 32 815 v6.1.0 which looks like a better starting point.

From TS 32.296 one can work lookup references to other relevant documents.

Edge devices such as GPRS gateways ("Serving GPRS Support Node" SGSN at the mobile end and "Gateway GPRS Support Node" GGSN at the external network end) interface among ISPs and 3G telecos to precisely control what traffic can flow through tunnels, generating charging information for resource management (network dimensioning), retail billing and wholesale transfer payments between ISPs and telecos and content providers (eg for video on demand). These have provision for downloading current tariff information (at least tariff switch times) to the edge device as required, which would keep track of tariffs locally according to time of day, volume etc as well as counting the actual volumes in each tunnel ("PDP context") setup to enable traffic from an IP network to mobile device.

"3G call and event data for the Packet Switched (PS) domain" has the details in TS 32.015

A "dumb" gateway which just counts packets can implement pre-paid services that will cut access when funds run out by burdening the Onling Charging System (OCS) with frequent resource allocation credit requests which reserve only a small amount from the subscriber current balance for each current session such as data traffic (GPRS) and Circuit switched voice calls. However maximum precision, flexibility and scalability can be achieved by allocating a monetary quota instead of packet counts and timeouts and having the gateway actually calculate the charges based on a tariff supplied by the rating function for the relevant subscriber at their current volume level and use up quota from a common pool of reserved cash according to those charges.

A useful starting point for understanding how telecos plan to assimilate wifi hotspots and their roaming networks that currently use various RADIUS based billing software into their own systems can be found in X.P0028-200-0v0.3_VV_Due_26_June-2006.pdf

This refers to a Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) which appears to be equivalent to the GPRS tunnel charging mentioned above. Detailed specs of these edge devices and the elements of the charging system that are to be included in them should be of interest.

This is a "hot" area with all sorts of strange phenomena. For example here's a European software patent on the "invention" of common billing

There's a huge struggle going on as to who gets to collect the rent and consumer surplus going on which provides essential background to the collapse in sharemarket value of fixed line telecos since isps and mobilcos are gradually learning how to just use the common infrastructure at wholesale rates and do their own billing at retail rates, which is basically all that teleco marketing does anyway.

Here's some pretty pictures from Nortel

There is a whole industry for billing as understood by electricity, gas, water etc utilities and other large corporations who are all starting to realize that their customer base can be used to establish virtual telecos etc since the essence of a teleco is its billing system and customer base.

Companies like Convergsys provide outsourced Business Support Services for both telecos and other sectors. In this world OSS stands for "Operations Support Services" although the extremely expensive software they provide and use relies heavily on Open Source and Free Software and specs.