Billing Concepts

This section deals with the billing system. It breaks down the actual call-flow from user to Provider(s).

The billing system is quite complex and there are a lot of concepts to grasp.

There are a number of main categories of billing in MOR. The most important are:

• Providers
• Least Cost Route (LCR)
• Directions
• Destinations
• Rates
• Tariffs
• Users
• Devices

Providers - In the old PSTN world, these were called Trunks. They are your routes to the outside world (out of your VoIP network). Providers can be of several types: Zap, SIP, IAX2, and H323. The type determines which technology is used to connect to the Provider.

LCR - Least Cost Route. LCR describes how calls may go through several Providers and the order in which they go. The order can be determined by the call route's price, quality or manual priority.

Directions - In other words - Countries. Could also be satellite networks. They just describe direction to which the call is routed.

Destinations - these are more concrete concepts of the calls course. Let's say we are dialing number 37068547771. From this number MOR knows, that Direction is Lithuania, but Destination is Mobile network Bite. Destinations are determined by Prefix. Each destination has unique Prefix. The Prefix from the example is 370685.

Rates - these are the prices for Destinations. They have many properties from which the way they are calculated depends.

Tariffs - they are groups of Rates. Sometimes they are called Price Lists.

Users - User is the actual user of the system – the client which dials out or receives calls. User can represent one person or whole company. User is main unit in the system. Most of the settings are associated with user.

Devices - Each user can have many devices. Device represents end-point where voice traffic should be sent. As example device can represent:

• VoIP phone
• VoIP softphone
• PSTN phone (connected through FXS port)