Purpose
The purpose of the diameter credit control application is to provide a framework for real-time charging, primarily meant for the communication between gateways/control-points and the back-end account/balance systems (typically an Online Charging System).
The application specifies methods for:
- Quota management (Reserve, Reauthorize, Abandon)
- Simple Debit/Credit
- Balance checks
- Price inquiries
The diameter credit control application does not specify which type units are bought/used and which items are charged. This is left to the service context that have to be specified separately, as is some of the semantics.
Examples of units used/bought:
- Time
- Upload/Download bytes
- SMS (Text Messages)
Examples of items charged:
- Money
- Points
- Units (e.g. if the balance is kept in the same units as what is being used)
Diameter credit control also specifies how to handle the fairly complex issue of multiple unit types used/charged against a single user balance. For instance, a user may pay for both online time and download bytes but has only a single account balance.
Read more about this topic: Diameter Credit-Control Application
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