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  • 1.  API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 23, 2023 11:28

    Hi all, 

    is there an open api definition to provide volume/revenue data in case of a revenue sharing model to a partner system? 

    In my case I am building a system that will perform complex rating/pricing calculations that will be then used to produce an invoice in the next step.

    The rating has two types of components : 
    1. fees payed based on usage data from network products that the company leases from its partners (pipes, cable segements, technical infrastructure in the ground etc)
    2. fees based on volume data from products the company produces on the leased infrastrucitre from (1) and sells to consumers. So basicaly the company has a revenue sharing model. For example: If the company sells Internet Access Product to the consumer John Galt in that area, it has to additionaly to (1) pay 5% of the revenue to the parner from whom she leased the infrastructure from.

    I found the TMF635 Usage Management API which can be used to build an API that will provide data for (1= usage) to my sytem. Now I am looking for an API that could be used to provide volume/revenue data to my "calculation" system. I would like to build my system on that api and build an adapter infront of the system that shares the volume/revenue data for with my system.

    Does such API definition for sharing revenue (in shared revenue models) exist? If no, what would be the recommendation for implementing revenue sharing models in general? I did not find much documentation on that. Just a few lines in Business Parner Payment Handling L4.

    Best Regards
    Anton



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    Anton Tsapko
    conology
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  • 2.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 23, 2023 15:22

    Hi Anton
    I'm not aware of an API that handles the revenue sharing. I'm not an expert in this area, but I have the feeling that typically this type of activity is done by batch, rather than online APIs. However perhaps the trends are changing and there are needs for synchronous behaviors. In that case, bear in mind that the TM Forum is a member-driven organization, and you might want to consider contributing such an API.



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    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.
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  • 3.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 23, 2023 16:03
    Edited by Anton Tsapko May 23, 2023 16:10

    Jonathan,

    I very much agree with your reasoning. A batch file is suited better in this situation.

     I got just a bit confused, because in my opinion the usage use-case could also very much be a batch kind of interface rather than API -  but still, it has an API definition in TMF.

    Why would I consider usage also to be suited for batch; here is an example:

    If a company A leases fibers in 5000 different cable segments (of different length) from another company B, 5000 usage data points (for fiber usage) are generated per month. (One cable segment can have up to 288 fibers in it). So in some cable segments in one particular month they might use only 10 fibers, in others 50, depending on the number of internet products they sell to the end-consumers.
    If company A has to pay for the usage of fibers in all those 5000 cable segments on yearly basis. That would be 12 x 5.000 = 60.000 usage data points that need to be collected/transferred once in a year in one go. In that case a batch would be more advantageous, wouldn't it be?
    So am I correct to assume that the TMF635-Usage Management should be used in cases with low volume data points then?

    Best Regards
    Anton



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    Anton Tsapko
    conology
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  • 4.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 24, 2023 02:33

    Definitely, Anton - TMF635 is for manipulation of discrete usage records, not for bulk.



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    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.
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  • 5.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    Posted May 25, 2023 11:52

    Hi,

    I don't have any additional further answer to the original question but I wanted to share that I see a similar issue when I consider Product Rating.

    Usage events are well covered but other types of events such as lifecycle events are not. TMF635 is very explicitly tied to usage. Another similarity is that Product Rating is also a scenario where volume could bring into question whether an API should be the only ingress mechanism.

    It would be good if the specification for the proposed Product Rating component covered these points.

    Thanks,
    Phil



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    Phil Moss
    MATRIXX Software
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  • 6.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 26, 2023 11:50

    @Anton Tsapko before using the TMF 635 for managing the collection of usages, did you create the related UsageSpecification, defining the characteristics of the partner service (usage definition: numbers, start and stop date-and-time) to communicate to the charging system the description of the usage (comprised of characteristics, which define all attributes known for a particular type of usage.)?



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    Santiago Lorente
    Salesforce
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  • 7.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 27, 2023 09:58
    Hello Santiago,
     
    right now I am in the planning phase, so I have not created any usage specifications yet. 
     
    After reading Jonathan's responses I am not so sure TMF635 would be the right API to go with. In my case the back-end system delivers a bulk of usage data for all related products (cable segments) for a specific period of time, for instance for 6 months. Depending on the time frame set the amount of data rows can be up to 36.000 (for 12 months period). 
    Interestingly, besides usage data (number of fibers used) that data set contains resource characteristics like cable segment length, total number of fibers and geo-data. This data needs to be processed by the charge-calculating system and probably displayed in a view.
     
    Best Regards
    Anton


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    Anton Tsapko
    conology
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  • 8.  RE: API around Revenue Sharing Data

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 27, 2023 09:15
    Hi Phil, 
     
    not sure, if I understood your correctly. I believe Product Rating is the scenario, where volume and usage data could come together. I found this entity in 
    ProductOFfering/ProductOfferingPrice/PriceLogicAlgorithm
     
    Pricing logic algorithm Data Model
    The PricingLogicAlgorithm entity represents an instantiation of an interface specification to external rating function (without a modeled bahavior in SID). Some of the parameters of the interface definition may be already set (such as price per unit) and some may be gathered during the rating process from the event (such as call duration) or from ProductCharacteristicValues (such as assigned bandwidth)
     
    So usage and volume data would be inputs to that "external rating function".
     
    Best Regards
    Anton


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    Anton Tsapko
    conology
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