Premium Rate Services (PRS) are high-tariff services which account for 2 to 4 % of the annual mobile operator revenues (European average). Surprisingly, PRS billing is hardly monitored today despite customer complaints due to the lack of tariff awareness and / or billing errors. PRS also squeeze the operator margin due to the high costs charged by PRS partners. Any error can be immediately turned into a cash machine by professional fraudsters that constantly monitors the market.

Retail billing of PRS requires special monitoring because the charging principles are more complex and may include: flat fee rates, time-dependent rates (including a minimum/maximum charge per call), variable rates (depending on options selected by the subscriber), fees for additional services, special VAT schemes, etc.

Moreover PRS are usually outside the core package rate plans which result in limited testing and in billing errors being undetected. This may have a huge impact, e.g. a mobile operator in Europe recently had to refund €1.9 million to subscribers who had been billed incorrectly for 3 years for calls made to third-party premium rate numbers.

Premium Rate Services (PRS) are high-tariff services which account for 2 to 4 % of the annual mobile operator revenues (European average). Surprisingly, PRS billing is hardly monitored today despite customer complaints due to the lack of tariff awareness and / or billing errors. PRS also squeeze the operator margin due to the high costs charged by PRS partners. Any error can be immediately turned into a cash machine by professional fraudsters that constantly monitors the market.

Retail billing of PRS requires special monitoring because the charging principles are more complex and may include: flat fee rates, time-dependent rates (including a minimum/maximum charge per call), variable rates (depending on options selected by the subscriber), fees for additional services, special VAT schemes, etc.

Moreover PRS are usually outside the core package rate plans which result in limited testing and in billing errors being undetected. This may have a huge impact, e.g. a mobile operator in Europe recently had to refund €1.9 million to subscribers who had been billed incorrectly for 3 years for calls made to third-party premium rate numbers.

Although the operator does not provide the service itself, the subscribers usually send their complaints to them - not to the premium rate service provider. These complaints may have serious financial impact: e.g. in North America, three mobile operators were required to stop misleading adverts promoting premium rate SMS and to compensate subscribers with refunds and penalties ranging between $1 million and $10 million.

Further to retail billing issues, the operators should also carefully address other risks impacting inter-operator revenues. Sometimes retail rates for PRS calls are lower than the interconnect cost charged by the wholesale carrier. On top of this, there is also a risk to manage unprofitable premium rate services as soon as the termination fee charged to the A-party is lower than the revenue share paid to the content provider.

Why Araxxe is the right partner to help you optimize your revenues derived from premium rate services?
While basic revenue assurance programmes are in place within most operators, the process improvements should keep pace with the changing telecom landscape. Araxxe monitoring services can help you to be deal with forms of leakage that are specific to PRS.
We design advanced test campaigns to premium rate numbers (both voice and SMS)
We operate -on your behalf- flexible test campaigns delivered in an industrialized way.
We check that each single transaction is properly billed: retail billing, interconnect billing and revenue sharing.
You select the monitoring mode addressing your business needs: in depth audit or recurring monitoring.
You leverage Araxxe unique expertise in both test campaign design and billing verification.