Mediation

In revenue management, mediation is a process used to collect, validate, filter, collate, correlate, aggregate and convert data to create a data record that can be used for billing purposes. It is the first step in the billing process after collection of data records, and before Rating.

The data records produced by mediation were called Call Detail Records (CDRs), and contained all the necessary parameters to rate and bill a voice call such as call duration, distance, time of day and so on. Latterly, the record has become known as an xDR, IPDR, EDR and so on, to distinguish voice call records from records used to bill data services.

Historically, telecoms switches performed some of the mediation tasks, and mediation was often built into the billing solution. Mediation functions are not typically provided by a router, however. Thus with the move to data networks (packet switching), as well as the introduction of prepaid services and data services, mediation became far more complex. This resulted in a generation of specialist, standalone mediation platforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Over time most of these were acquired by billing vendors.

It should be noted, however, that data produced by mediation platforms is often used for non-billing purposes. For example, the mediation software might generate traffic volume statistics based on the number and origin of the records passing through it. Those statistics could then be used for capacity planning, as part of a network monitoring procedure, or for any other business intelligence applications. Other solutions such as Interconnect settlement, Business intelligence, Revenue assurance and Fraud management, Test Call Generation and so on, may use the data provided by a mediation platform.