Telecom Mediation

Telecom Mediation is a system which acts as an interface or a middle layer between network elements and billing system/down stream applications like Fraud Management Systems, Revenue Assurance, Data Ware house etc.
The functionalities that are performed by Mediation are as follows.

• Mediation collects the CDRs from the network elements (MSC, SGSN, GGSN etc).
• Segregation of CDRs (separation of different kinds of CDRs).
• Mediation performs data enrichment and format conversion.
• Preprocessing and Post processing of CDRs.
• Applies business rules such as Filtration, Aggregation, Correlation, and Duplicate check etc on the CDRs.
• Sending SNMP traps in case of errors during the parsing, conversion, distribution and processing of CDRs in the mediation system.
• Distribution of BDRs/CDRs to the billing systems or down-stream applications.

CDR Collection

Mediation collects the usage records/CDRs from the network elements. Mediation supports the collection of the usage records using various protocols that are widely supported namely FTP, SFTP, FTAM, X.25 Serial interface, MTP, SNMP. In the GSM networks the widely used interfaces to collect the CDRs are FTP/SFTP and FTAM. SFTP provides a secured way of collecting the CDRs as it uses SSL (secured socket layer) which encrypts the data while transferring the data in a secured way.


Preprocessing, Parsing and Validation

Preprocessing is a process of removal of headers/trailer information for further processing. Preprocessing also involves splitting the fields of the CDR, adding additional fields in the CDR required for processing. This may involve file or data base look ups to populate the route ID’s etc.
The collected or preprocessed CDR is parsed to identify whether all the required fields are present in the CDR and validated to the switch format to check whether it meets the specification. This involves checking the length of the CDR, usage field type (type of CDR) and fields are in proper order.

Business Rules (Processing Functions)

There are different types of business rules that are used in mediation.
· Sequence Validation
· Filtration
· Aggregation
· Duplicate CDR Check
· Correlation
· Time Gap DetectionTrunk Analysis