Advice Of Charge Services For Euro Isdn - AudioCodes Mediant 1000 User Manual

SIP User's Manual

18.5.5 Advice of Charge Services for Euro ISDN

Advice of charge (AOC) is a pre-billing function that tasks the rating engine with calculating
the cost of using a service and relaying that information back to the customer thus, allowing
users to obtain charging information for all calls during the call (AOC-D) or at the end of the
call (AOC-E), or both.
The AOC-D and AOC-E messages are part of the Facility Information Element (IE)
message:

AOC-D message—ISDN Advice of Charge information sent during a call. The
message is sent periodically to subscribers of AOC during-call services.

AOC-E message—ISDN Advice of Charge information sent at the end of a call.
The device supports the sending of AoC messages for Tel-to-IP calls, providing billing
applications with the number of charged units. This feature can typically be implemented in
the hotel industry, where external calls made by guests can be billed accurately. In such a
setup, the device is connected on one side to a PBX through an E1 line (Euro ISDN), and
on the other side to a SIP trunk provided by an ITSP. When a call is made by a guest, the
device first sends an AOC-D Facility message to the PBX indicating the connection charge
unit, and then sends subsequent AOC-D messages every user-defined interval to indicate
the charge unit during the call. When the call ends, the devicesends an AoC-E Facility
message to the PBX indicating the total number of charged units.
To configure AoC:
1. Ensure that the PSTN protocol for the E1 trunk line is Euro ISDN and set to network
side.
2. Ensure that the date and time of the device is correct. For accuracy, it is
recommended to use an NTP server to obtain the date and time.
3. Enable the AoC service, using the EnableAOC parameter.
4. Configure charge codes in the Charge Code table (ChargeCode) - see Configuring
Charge Codes on page 323. Note that in the Charge Code table, the table fields are
as follows:
•
'End Time' - time at which this charge code ends
•
'Pulse Interval' - time between every sent AOC-D Facility message
•
'Pulses On Answer' - number of charging units in first generated AOC-D Facility
message
5. Assign the charge code index to the desired routing rule in the Outbound IP Routing
table (see 'Configuring Outbound IP Routing Table' on page 271).
Version 6.4 319
18. GW and IP to IP
March 2012