We have been looking for ONE BILL for over two decades now, but we still put up with multiple bills. If there really has to be just one bill, why limit it to just telecom services? While we are at it, why not have really one master billing platform that bills for everything from telco services, TV, gas, electricity etc – basically bill for all those things where a centralized billing infrastructure is feasible.
Consumers had to put up with separate billing for shopping. And then credit cards came along and we outsourced the billing part to the banks. I think banks are best equipped to bill for everything. They have historically been the best collectors. If the existing banking software could be extended to interface with the future IMS billing, for instance, the banks would be able to host a billing network for telcos.
I could then pay my mobile, Internet, TV, and wireline phone bills from an ATM, or online, or just give the bank mandate to either pay these bills as direct debit or bill them forward on my credit card, or just send one bill that lists all fees including bank charges. I think that will solve a lot of billing related headaches for the consumer.
Just like the banking services that I get easily out of station (such as ATM cash, credit card purchases etc), telecom services can also be extended in the same way out of the station. Right now, billing is the biggest hurdle in providing a better roaming for various telecom services. The telco services will become easily roam-able if these banks connect to each others’ billing networks somehow. And banks can be found everywhere in the world.
Imagine if you are able to easily punch in you card and pin number into a TV inside your holiday hotel room? You could get your programs streamed right where you are, and get billed for it later (‘$4: IP TV services availed on Phi Phi Island’). For merchants, there will be several benefits … I can think of one of them …. Vonage is technically able to offer services outside the US due to the nature of VoIP technology, but collection is a problem. If local banks overseas take care of the collection, the sun would never set on Vonage’s virtual empire of customers.
The main problems I see in outsourcing telco billing to a bank is the following: Back office systems are notoriously proprietary and not an off the shelf solution that can be hosted across multiple service provider customers. It becomes proprietary because service providers try to differentiate their services. However, I think for commoditized services such as plain old calling, and TV services, a consumer would really benefit if his bank took care of all his utility bills regardless of where the customer makes use of the services.