Overview
This section contains help and resources pertaining to usage and usage mediation.
What Is Usage?
Broadly speaking, usage is a term to describe records of data that contain information a user and the service they are using.
Some service types, such as telephony, utilities and some data services, charge customers depending on how much they use the service, when they use it (as in the time of day) and other factors. This information is captured by the service supplier at the time. The information can then used to
- send the user a notification about their usage and notify them about exceeding usage limits
- charge the customer based on their usage of the service.
Usage charges are in addition to any set up and access fees that may apply.
What Is Rating?
Rating, or usage rating, is the process of taking a usage record and calculating the correct price to apply. There are two broad categories users should be familiar with
Unrated usage or 'raw' usage, is the original usage record as it was supplied from the service supplier or carrier. Raw usage does not contain any pricing information.
Rated usage is the output of the rating process where the system takes the unrated usage record, goes and looks up the service, the plan information and the associated costs for different types of usage. The output is a new usage record with a charge on it that can be used to bill the customer.
Usage and Rating Articles
Below are our articles related to usage and rating