The outcollect process is an exportation of usage records. IDI rates and bills usage made by your company's subscribers. If there is usage that belongs to another carrier's subscriber, IDI rates the usage, but does not bill or tax it.
Once rated, the usage detail record is exported to an ARP (like Syniverse) for distribution to the appropriate Roaming Partners who then charge their subscribers for the call. Syniverse also coordinates payments between two wireless carriers who have carried the other's subscribers' calls on their network.
Usage detail records from the switch are processed through IDI's Rating and Billing application. The system determines which records belong to your company's subscribers and enters the rates in the appropriate database for future billing. Those usage records that do not belong to your subscribers are rated according to the agreed-upon rates of the respective Partner Carrier (Roaming Partner).
These records are stored in an Outcollect-specific database and then sent to the ARP. (CDMA/TDMA records are in CIBER format, GSM records are in TAP format.) Next the records are passed on to the correct Roaming Partner so they can bill their subscribers. The ARP also coordinates the settlement process between carriers.
Occasionally, a file may be rejected by the ARP, usually because a file became corrupted or in some way did not agree with the transmittal file that accompanied it. The reject files can then be corrected and resent as a new file. (See Error Files.)
Note:
Outcollect is not generated by the Clearinghouse Service while rating or billing is taking place. This is to prevent incomplete outcollect files, reporting mismatches, or locking problems. A message or exception is generated if a requested process is not currently available.
The Clearinghouse Service controls the flow of the outcollect usage records. (See Clearinghouse Service Configuration to set up the Clearinghouse Service in Config Console.) These are the steps that the process follows:
Determine the records to outcollect. See Determining the Records to Outcollect.
Start the file generation process. See Starting the File Generation Process.
Write the CIBER/TAP batch. See Writing the CIBER batch.
Transmitting Roaming Usage Records. See Transmitting Roaming Usage Records.