The global convergent charging market is forecast to grow at a 16% CAGR from 2014 to 2019, according to IHS.
The market reached $3.1 billion worldwide in 2014, driven by operators’ purchase of additional capacity to support subscriber growth, several major tier-1 deals and a healthy number of smaller engagements.
“While the deployment of convergent charging solutions as adjuncts to legacy billing systems continues, we’re also increasingly seeing convergent charging being implemented as part of larger BSS transformation projects,” said Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at IHS.
“Operators such as Singtel and Telefonica are overhauling their entire billing and charging environments over the course of several years—initiatives often spurred by network modernizations as operators recognize that their existing systems are not flexible or scalable enough to support the new services that LTE enables,” said Levine said.
Huawei nabbed the convergent charging market share lead for the second consecutive year in 2014 while NetCracker and Ericsson competed for the No.2 position.
Also, interest in delivering billing and charging via a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is on the rise, with several vendors already offering this delivery model or considering it.
Key drivers behind convergent charging spending include new billing and pricing models such as service tiers, sponsored data and bolt-on options.