Call Costing Engine

The telephone call costing engine, currently used in InfoDEN’s PABX Call Logger , is fast, compact, configurable and is capable of being integrated into third party applications across multiple platforms. The call costing engine’s potential uses include:

Internet based call costing - the call costing engine can be licenced for use by any web site requiring an accurate telephone call costing function. The costing engine creates its charging tables dynamically based on the “calling from” phone number and is therefore capable of accurately processing costing requests and returning the processed calls in the required format. The costing engine can also process each call costing request using up to 256 user defined and configurable carrier costing tables. This is ideal for sites wanting to provide carrier comparison reports or individual telecommunications carriers/resellers wanting to provide a call calculator service for their customers.

Call Accounting Applications – the costing engine can be licenced for use by third party software developers wanting to rapidly enter the call accounting market. These developers can then focus their efforts on the userability, reporting and networking funtions of their programs. This option is also available to existing call accounting developers who are unable to keep up with the ever changing manner of the telecommunications industry. International developers will also find this an attractive option when analysing the feasibilty of entering the Australian market. 

Other Software Applications - the costing engine can be licenced for use by third party software developers wanting call costing functionality in their software applications. This may include developers of CRM, accounting or phone dialler applications where call accounting is not the core use of the software, however its inclusion will provide benefit to users and a competitive edge.

PDA Applications – a great opportunity awaits any developer wanting to exploit the costing engine’s power on Windows CE devices. Currently we are not aware of any call costing based applications available for Windows CE.

Apple OSX – as with Windows CE, an opportunity also awaits any developer wanting to use the costing engine on the Apple OSX platform. Currently we are not aware of any call costing based applications available for Apple OSX.

The costing engines features include:

SPEED – The costing engine can process 100,000 calls in less than 2 seconds.

INTERNATIONAL PORTABILITY – Costing tables are currently available for Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the United Kingdom. Costing tables for other countries will be developed as required. This allows the costing engine to be integrated into third party products for sale in multiple countries.

SIZE – The size of the costing engine is only 341KB including telephone numbering plan and one carrier’s rates. Each additional carrier rate table adds an extra 4KB to the application. Therefore, adding the costing engine to an application does not diminish the ability to distribute that product via the Internet. The costing engine can also run on Windows CE handheld PDA devices.

GENERIC RATE TABLES - The costing engine uses a single set of costing tables to calculate call costs for every charging zone throughout Australia. Therefore a single version of any product using the costing engine can be distributed to every region in Australia without the need for site specific table customisation. This also simplifies rate updating as one set of files can be distributed to all customers.

RATE VALIDITY – Each carrier rate table can have multiple rates running across different date ranges. I.e. the ability to include rate expiry dates allows rate changes and specials to be applied accurately.

HTML CONVERTER – A Universal Converter has been developed to automatically extract the National Numbering Plan details contained in various soft copy formats and convert it into C++ code. This is an efficient means of maintaining the numbering plan tables and allows updates to be implemented quickly and reliably.

FILE STRUCTURE – The costing engine does not use a conventional database to store costing related information. All costing parameters are stored in InfoDEN’s proprietary file types thereby eliminating the processing overhead imposed by database applications. 

NETWORKABILITY – The costing engine can be run in a distributed environment. It can service clients on many machines across a network as it is developed using the Component Object Model (COM) interface specifications.

PLATFORMS – The costing engine has been written using the C++ programming language and can be compiled to run on multiple platforms including Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, Windows CE, MAC OSX, Unix and Linux.

(source from: www.ipcortex.co.uk)