The service, dubbed Variable Charging, Routing and Rating (VCRR), uses the Cisco Mobile Exchange platform and will allow users to be charged in accordance with the value of the products and services they use rather than the basic per-minute or per-bit basis, giving mmO2s customers a far more detailed and streamlined billing experience than previously. VCRR was developed in response to the growing need for an intelligent approach to mobile data services billing. The issue of how to charge for data transfer has become an acute problem for the mobile industry since the introduction of multi-media messaging services (MMS) and particularly as operators move from General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) to third-generation wireless (3G) networks. In these increasingly data-centric environments it is becoming more and more important to be able to distinguish what kind of content a user is accessing and to bill them accordingly - so that, for example, MMS messages are billed on a per-message basis while wireless application protocol (WAP) pages are charged on a bandwidth basis, even though WAP is the underlying protocol for both. VCRR is being implemented across the mmO2 group, initially being rolled out in Ireland in the second quarter of 2004, to be followed by the UK in the following months. The system analyses content types using Ciscos Content Services Gateway software, part of the Cisco Mobile Exchange architecture, which is integrated in a Cisco 7600 Series Router chassis. Information on content is fed into a billing system from Redknee.
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