Class 4 Softswitch is usually known as Wholesale Softswitch as it is majorly used for aggregating the volume of traffic from different suppliers or wholesale carriers. It performs functions such as routing, billing, reporting and monitoring which can be administered and managed from a centralized GUI. Generally, class 5 softswitch (or retail softswitch) collects VoIP traffic from cities or states and pours them into class 4 softswitch for traffic termination across international destinations or countries. By this, it is clearly understood that class 4 softswitch is for wholesale VoIP business whereas class 5 softswitch is for retail VoIP business.
The following are the important components in Class 4 Softswitch that service providers should keep a tab on:
1. Routing – It is an important component in class 4 softswitch which is responsible for routing the incoming traffic to destinations as per the routing logic applied. Depending on routing logic, service providers can have different routing types such as LCR, Dial Plan Routing, Percentage Based Routing and Prefix Match Routing. All these routing types give free hand to service providers to plan their profit margins accordingly. That said, most service providers prefer LCR as it picks up the least cost route from the available list of routes to terminate the VoIP traffic thereby offering great returns for them.
2. Billing – Another important component in softswitch, billing is responsible for keeping the track of customer records and generate bills as per their usage. The billing function is most critical as any mismatch in the billing could lead to serious business loss and diminish customer loyalty. So, the billing feature has to be robust to encompass different rate plans, discounts and offers whenever applicable and generate accurate bills.
3. Monitoring & Reporting – Finally, monitoring and reporting helps providers with required business intelligence to run the business operations smoothly and effectively. Service providers can get live call monitoring and generate different kinds of reports such as revenue based reports, time zone based reports, user based reports, etc.
Service providers should take a free demo of the class 4 softswitch from solution providers and evaluate its performance before engaging it for full-time business.
The following are the important components in Class 4 Softswitch that service providers should keep a tab on:
1. Routing – It is an important component in class 4 softswitch which is responsible for routing the incoming traffic to destinations as per the routing logic applied. Depending on routing logic, service providers can have different routing types such as LCR, Dial Plan Routing, Percentage Based Routing and Prefix Match Routing. All these routing types give free hand to service providers to plan their profit margins accordingly. That said, most service providers prefer LCR as it picks up the least cost route from the available list of routes to terminate the VoIP traffic thereby offering great returns for them.
2. Billing – Another important component in softswitch, billing is responsible for keeping the track of customer records and generate bills as per their usage. The billing function is most critical as any mismatch in the billing could lead to serious business loss and diminish customer loyalty. So, the billing feature has to be robust to encompass different rate plans, discounts and offers whenever applicable and generate accurate bills.
3. Monitoring & Reporting – Finally, monitoring and reporting helps providers with required business intelligence to run the business operations smoothly and effectively. Service providers can get live call monitoring and generate different kinds of reports such as revenue based reports, time zone based reports, user based reports, etc.
Service providers should take a free demo of the class 4 softswitch from solution providers and evaluate its performance before engaging it for full-time business.