Over the coming weeks, many carriers will try to evaluate what terms they should be advocating to the FCC for Inter-Carrier Compensation Reform. Should you sign on to one organization or company’s proposal? It is hard to identify the commonalities, especially when a cornerstone assumption that is true today may not be true tomorrow.

1. Ensure that your records are accurate and complete.
   Reconcile all originating and terminating carrier call records against SS7 records to make sure you are recording all carrier traffic accurately. There is nothing worse than finding out that the advocacy position you designed does not match what is best for your firm.
2. Seek to understand how your market is changing.
   Talk with the top sales reps. Identify products that they are selling in large numbers. The usage profile associated with these products will increase over time and will be the norm by the time the new regime is effective.
3. Understand the upside from wireless and ISP terminating traffic.
   Many carriers have lived without compensation for wireless or ISP terminating traffic for so many years that they forget that there will be an upside from these types of traffic if you are one of those carriers not receiving compensation from today.
4. Identify business process implementation changes NOW!
   Some business process changes, especially with legacy billing systems, need long lead times to implement. Further, they may cost way more than the financial benefit of the change. Meet with internal business process team members to understand the timeline and cost for any major change. You may choose to advocate a more simple approach because the implementation tasks will cost a fraction of a more complicated proposal.
5. Investigate the opportunity to use peering relationships rather than using the PSTN network to terminate traffic.
   There are a number of carriers who offer peering services. Analyzing traffic available to peer may be beneficial under certain circumstances and should be factored out of any data sets when analyzing the impact of any advocacy position.

Eva Fettig is Co-Owner of UsageWorks LLC, providing software services to the telecommunications industry through reporting, reconciliation, and data trend analysis.  Ms. Fettig is also Principal of The Fettig Group, offering consulting to telecommunications service providers in the areas of intercarrier compensation recovery, profitability management, regulatory, and compliance. UsageWorks allows you to not only know what was billed accurately, but also know what wasn’t billed and most importantly provides the necessary roadmap to closing the gaps. UsageWorks scenarios can give you an insight into change to revenue as a result of intercarriercompensation reform. The content of this article is copyrighted and cannot be distributed without a written consent of UsageWorks and Eva Fettig.