Billing Market Review

Spending on billing software products will decline in 2009 and will increase only slightly in 2010. We expect that deals that were delayed by the recession will pick up early in 2010, as the effects of the global recession ease, but revenue from these deals will not increase dramatically until the end of 2010 and the later years of the forecast. In 2010-2013, spending will rise slightly faster, at a CAGR of 4%. Some application segments, service segments and regions will experience better growth than the lacklustre overall rate.

Spending on core rating and pricing platforms has fallen and is not likely to recover. Although these platforms remain the single largest telecoms software sub-segment, the focus for billing growth has shifted to real-time charging. Spending on traditional mediation is less and will not recover to former levels; it has been supplanted by active mediation, which also provides traditional mediation functions.

However, changing business models make partner and interconnect billing very important. Spending in this area has been held down by the recession, but will increase from 2010 to 2013. Mobile roaming, including roaming support for data services, is the single largest contributor to growing partner settlements. Settlements with content suppliers and advertisers will be a significant factor by the end of the forecast period.

Business optimisation is growing in importance and communications service providers (CSPs) are increasingly willing to use commercial products. Business optimisation encompasses a range of capabilities including revenue assurance, fraud, business intelligence, network expense management, data retention and credit risk management. All of these areas help CSPs to get more profit from their established business.

Mobile services create the most demand for billing support, and demand will grow modestly as a result of expansion in developing markets and new support for mobile broadband services in developed markets. Residential broadband is driving solid growth. Business services are getting more support as CSPs evaluate markets and push to offer more services for small and medium-sized businesses. Spending on PSTNs, which once constituted the majority of billing, is in rapid decline.

This report provides a detailed five-year forecast for rating and pricing software, mediation software, partner and interconnect billing software, business optimisation software and real-time charging software. These are each broken out by service: mobile, residential broadband, business services and PSTN. They are further broken down by region: North America, Central and Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. The report includes market shares of the leading suppliers overall and in each of the application segments. It also contains analysis of the market drivers and inhibitors for growth in all segments.

The Billing market review report addresses the following important questions:

• What is the impact of the global recession on spending on billing software?
• How are the needs of CSPs changing as they offer new services and are faced with new competitive threats?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of key suppliers and what is their market position?

The report includes tables comparing 88 suppliers. The leading suppliers’ market shares are provided for the billing market as a whole and for each of the application areas.

Overall, this 89-page report is an excellent source of market intelligence for CSPs, network equipment and software suppliers, systems integrators, venture capitalists and financial analysts.