Open APIs

Hi Team,
 
The use case I have is a very common one - The customer subscribes/enrolls into a Service (wireless / value added service like streaming ) and is charged every month. I am looking for model and entity relationship between Customer, Customer Account, Service and its Enrollment/Subscription.

Here,
   Service entity (as defined in TMF638 ): Defines the service Id, category, endDate, isBundle, etc
   Customer Account ( as defined in TMF666 ) : Defines Party Account , its associated Payment Methods.

I am able to see relatedEntity attribute at Service level to connect to other service. However I am not able to locate any subscription related entity.

If a customer account has subscribed to a Service on a monthly recurring basis (called as Subscription / Enrollment ), the enrollment has certain attributes like, enrollment start Date, end Date, Customer billing account , its payment method.

I would like to know the TM Forum model/Spec which explains the relationship of Subscription/Enrollment entity to the Service and Customer Account.
Please share your thoughts.

------------------------------
Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Tracfone Wireless, Inc
------------------------------

Hi Sadhasivam

Unfortunately, the specific notions of Subscriber and Subscription is missing, both from the Information Framework (SID) and the Open API.
Clearly there is a very relationship between Subscription and Product, but not all Products are Subscriptions.
But this area has not been developed.
More generally, a ProductPrice (or ProductOrderPrice) has a relationship to the paying Account (see TMF622 Product Order and TMF637 Product Inventory for details).

Sorry

------------------------------
Jonathan Goldberg
Amdocs Management Limited
Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 22, 2021 18:39
From: Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Team,

The use case I have is a very common one - The customer subscribes/enrolls into a Service (wireless / value added service like streaming ) and is charged every month. I am looking for model and entity relationship between Customer, Customer Account, Service and its Enrollment/Subscription.

Here,
   Service entity (as defined in TMF638 ): Defines the service Id, category, endDate, isBundle, etc
   Customer Account ( as defined in TMF666 ) : Defines Party Account , its associated Payment Methods.

I am able to see relatedEntity attribute at Service level to connect to other service. However I am not able to locate any subscription related entity.

If a customer account has subscribed to a Service on a monthly recurring basis (called as Subscription / Enrollment ), the enrollment has certain attributes like, enrollment start Date, end Date, Customer billing account , its payment method.

I would like to know the TM Forum model/Spec which explains the relationship of Subscription/Enrollment entity to the Service and Customer Account.
Please share your thoughts.

------------------------------
Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Tracfone Wireless, Inc
------------------------------

Hi Jonathan,
Where exactly do you see a difference between a Product (as stored in Product Inventory) and a Subscription?
Regarding a "subscriber" - from my personal experience, I believe that this is a very confusing term and that it leads to various misconceptions. From this point of view, it's quite OK that this term doesn't exist in SID. Why I consider it confusing and in fact dangerous (limiting business) - the traditional telco view on a subscriber is that it's a person using a specific subscription (product). This view implies (silently assumes) that the telco may know the person and can communicate to it (e.g. offer various add-on services to this person, associate actions performed using services available as part of products subscribed by this person to such a person, etc.). This may have been the case for the residential segment in the past, but it is not really valid since quite some time ago:

1. In most cases the provider knows nothing or almost nothing about the person. The provider doesn't need to know the name (customers are not required to tell the provider who exactly would be using a particular ordered product). If I buy a SIM card and give it to my child, noone would know. Even if the provider gets some name at certain point in time, there are no guarantees that the product is still used by that person, nor that the name is a real one (not even mentioning that just having a name doesn't genuinely identify a particular person).
2. There are no guarantees that there is any particular person using the product. Who is a "subscriber" of a mobile SIM card installed into a car, elevator/lift, etc.?
3. There are no guarantees that it may be used for communication (yet BSS systems of service providers may often have this 'shortcut' hardcoded, leading to limitations when trying to offer other services outside from the traditional telco area) - there's nothing like a generic contact directly associated to a particular 'subscription'. Having a special 'subscriber' entity wouldn't change that.
4. There are no guarantees that certain action performed using services included within a particular product (even if the product includes communication services, which may have been always the case with traditional telco products, but not necessarily any longer) may be associated with a particular person having specific entitlement to such actions - it is not guaranteed that somebody connecting to the customer portal using a data connection performed through a particular product (e.g. a mobile data subscription) may be automatically associated to a person eligible to create orders, etc.

In this context, I believe that the traditional telco view on a 'subscriber' is in fact a mixture of other entities documented in SID (not necessarily all of them need to be known to the service provider) - a product (the subscription), an engaged party with a specific role, a contact, possibly also specific customer account and possibly even more.
Just my 2 cents
Tomas

------------------------------
Tomáš Hajný
ČD - Telematika
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 23, 2021 02:17
From: Jonathan Goldberg
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Sadhasivam

Unfortunately, the specific notions of Subscriber and Subscription is missing, both from the Information Framework (SID) and the Open API.
Clearly there is a very relationship between Subscription and Product, but not all Products are Subscriptions.
But this area has not been developed.
More generally, a ProductPrice (or ProductOrderPrice) has a relationship to the paying Account (see TMF622 Product Order and TMF637 Product Inventory for details).

Sorry

------------------------------
Jonathan Goldberg
Amdocs Management Limited
Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 22, 2021 18:39
From: Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Team,

The use case I have is a very common one - The customer subscribes/enrolls into a Service (wireless / value added service like streaming ) and is charged every month. I am looking for model and entity relationship between Customer, Customer Account, Service and its Enrollment/Subscription.

Here,
   Service entity (as defined in TMF638 ): Defines the service Id, category, endDate, isBundle, etc
   Customer Account ( as defined in TMF666 ) : Defines Party Account , its associated Payment Methods.

I am able to see relatedEntity attribute at Service level to connect to other service. However I am not able to locate any subscription related entity.

If a customer account has subscribed to a Service on a monthly recurring basis (called as Subscription / Enrollment ), the enrollment has certain attributes like, enrollment start Date, end Date, Customer billing account , its payment method.

I would like to know the TM Forum model/Spec which explains the relationship of Subscription/Enrollment entity to the Service and Customer Account.
Please share your thoughts.

------------------------------
Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Tracfone Wireless, Inc
------------------------------

Hi Tomáš
You have clear opinions, which you have articulated very well, thanks for contributing to this discussion.
I am not privy to the history of why Subscription and Subscriber are not in the SID, I do believe that an Amdocs colleague of mine tried (many years ago) to contribute, but agreement wasn't reached. Maybe for some of the reasons you state. Perhaps @Cecile Ludwichowski knows/remembers.
Anyway​ I'll try to deal with the points you raise:
1. A lot depends here on what identification/authentication is needed when using the product. Mobile phones (with the accompanying facilities) do not currently use strong authentication. On the other hand, TV, especially when minors are involved, can use authentication, so that (for example) parental controls can be implemented. In this case the CSP "knows" who is currently using the product. In any case, our fallback would be the customer, or the person that the customer nominated as the susbcriber.
2. The subscriber of an IoT SIM would be the customer.
3. Not sure what you are saying here. There is no rule in TMF (SID or Open API) that says Products need to be for communications. Consider an extended maintenance product for a device. This is a product with a recurring charge, and could be validly considered a subscription.
4. Seems to be the same point as 1.

But yes it would need to be discussed within the various teams to ensure that the concepts have value to TMF members.

------------------------------
Jonathan Goldberg
Amdocs Management Limited
Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 23, 2021 08:58
From: Tomáš Hajný
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Jonathan,
Where exactly do you see a difference between a Product (as stored in Product Inventory) and a Subscription?
Regarding a "subscriber" - from my personal experience, I believe that this is a very confusing term and that it leads to various misconceptions. From this point of view, it's quite OK that this term doesn't exist in SID. Why I consider it confusing and in fact dangerous (limiting business) - the traditional telco view on a subscriber is that it's a person using a specific subscription (product). This view implies (silently assumes) that the telco may know the person and can communicate to it (e.g. offer various add-on services to this person, associate actions performed using services available as part of products subscribed by this person to such a person, etc.). This may have been the case for the residential segment in the past, but it is not really valid since quite some time ago:

1. In most cases the provider knows nothing or almost nothing about the person. The provider doesn't need to know the name (customers are not required to tell the provider who exactly would be using a particular ordered product). If I buy a SIM card and give it to my child, noone would know. Even if the provider gets some name at certain point in time, there are no guarantees that the product is still used by that person, nor that the name is a real one (not even mentioning that just having a name doesn't genuinely identify a particular person).
2. There are no guarantees that there is any particular person using the product. Who is a "subscriber" of a mobile SIM card installed into a car, elevator/lift, etc.?
3. There are no guarantees that it may be used for communication (yet BSS systems of service providers may often have this 'shortcut' hardcoded, leading to limitations when trying to offer other services outside from the traditional telco area) - there's nothing like a generic contact directly associated to a particular 'subscription'. Having a special 'subscriber' entity wouldn't change that.
4. There are no guarantees that certain action performed using services included within a particular product (even if the product includes communication services, which may have been always the case with traditional telco products, but not necessarily any longer) may be associated with a particular person having specific entitlement to such actions - it is not guaranteed that somebody connecting to the customer portal using a data connection performed through a particular product (e.g. a mobile data subscription) may be automatically associated to a person eligible to create orders, etc.

In this context, I believe that the traditional telco view on a 'subscriber' is in fact a mixture of other entities documented in SID (not necessarily all of them need to be known to the service provider) - a product (the subscription), an engaged party with a specific role, a contact, possibly also specific customer account and possibly even more.
Just my 2 cents
Tomas

------------------------------
Tomáš Hajný
ČD - Telematika

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 23, 2021 02:17
From: Jonathan Goldberg
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Sadhasivam

Unfortunately, the specific notions of Subscriber and Subscription is missing, both from the Information Framework (SID) and the Open API.
Clearly there is a very relationship between Subscription and Product, but not all Products are Subscriptions.
But this area has not been developed.
More generally, a ProductPrice (or ProductOrderPrice) has a relationship to the paying Account (see TMF622 Product Order and TMF637 Product Inventory for details).

Sorry

------------------------------
Jonathan Goldberg
Amdocs Management Limited
Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 22, 2021 18:39
From: Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Subject: Subscription Model

Hi Team,

The use case I have is a very common one - The customer subscribes/enrolls into a Service (wireless / value added service like streaming ) and is charged every month. I am looking for model and entity relationship between Customer, Customer Account, Service and its Enrollment/Subscription.

Here,
   Service entity (as defined in TMF638 ): Defines the service Id, category, endDate, isBundle, etc
   Customer Account ( as defined in TMF666 ) : Defines Party Account , its associated Payment Methods.

I am able to see relatedEntity attribute at Service level to connect to other service. However I am not able to locate any subscription related entity.

If a customer account has subscribed to a Service on a monthly recurring basis (called as Subscription / Enrollment ), the enrollment has certain attributes like, enrollment start Date, end Date, Customer billing account , its payment method.

I would like to know the TM Forum model/Spec which explains the relationship of Subscription/Enrollment entity to the Service and Customer Account.
Please share your thoughts.

------------------------------
Sadhasivam Angamuthu
Tracfone Wireless, Inc
------------------------------