The convergent charging market reached $3.1 billion worldwide in 2014, driven by operators’ purchase of additional capacity to support subscriber growth, several major Tier 1 deals and a healthy number of smaller engagements, according to the IHS Infonetics Convergent Charging Software and Services report. Key drivers behind convergent charging spending also include new billing and pricing models such as service tiers, sponsored data and bolt-on options. IHS forecasts the global convergent charging market to grow at a 16 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019.
IHS said that Operators such as Singtel and Telefonica are overhauling their entire billing and charging environments over the course of several years—initiatives often spurred by network modernizations as Operators recognize that their existing systems are not flexible or scalable enough to support the new services that LTE enables.
According to IHS, Huawei nabbed the convergent charging market share lead for the second consecutive year in 2014, with NetCracker and Ericsson jointly taking the second position.
- IHS added that interest in delivering billing and charging via a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is on the rise, with several vendors already offering this delivery model or considering it.
Shira Levine, Research Director, Service Enablement & Subscriber Intelligence, IHS
While the deployment of convergent charging solutions as adjuncts to legacy billing systems continues, we’re also increasingly seeing convergent charging being implemented as part of larger BSS transformation projects.
