Agent-Based Framework for Building Efficient Postpaid Billing System in Telecommunications

Abstract

The postpaid and prepaid billing systems currently in operation in Telecommunications have some problems that show a win-loss situation. In postpaid the problem is mostly due to fraudulent activities by some employees that costs a telecommunications company a loss of between 5% and 15% of its total revenue as shown by a research, couple with the inefficiency of some human personnel like the dispatch riders who dispatch or distribute bills. While the prepaid billing has its problems like inability to make calls at zero level credit, no matter how urgent and important that call is to the customer. In order to minimize these problems, a framework is proposed in this paper. Software Agent Technology is used by identifying some of the areas and personnel liable to fraud and inefficiency and substituting them with Software Agents. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to model the proposed framework. Java as an Object-oriented programming language is used to come up with the prototype of the agent system, Visual Basic 6.0 was also used to code the processes involved in the three subsystems. The results obtained have shown an improvement compared with the two prominent billing system (postpaid and prepaid) as the new framework shows a win-win situation where both the customers and the telecommunications company benefit.