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Billing System for International E-Mail

Billing System for International E-Mail. Rich Hill, SIM USA ICCM '97. Introduction. Why Bill for E-Mail? Overview of the SIMail Network First Go-Round on Billing Goals for our Billing System Implementation Current State of Affairs ToDo List Questions and Comments.

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Billing System for International E-Mail

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  1. Billing System for International E-Mail Rich Hill, SIM USA ICCM '97

  2. Introduction • Why Bill for E-Mail? • Overview of the SIMail Network • First Go-Round on Billing • Goals for our Billing System • Implementation • Current State of Affairs • ToDo List • Questions and Comments

  3. Overview of the SIMail Network • UUCP based mail-hub on a DEC micro-VAX • Dial-up to an ISP (UUCP) • Dial-up connections to 14 field offices (Africa and Asia) • Using Telebit Modems • Many offices have their own internet connections

  4. ICA Cote Dakar Seneg Thies Senega Jos Nigeria Kankan Guinea Pokhara Nepal Rahim Yar Pakistan Khartoum Sudan Ouagadougou Burkina Faso SIMail Network Toronto Canada Compu$erve Internet Lausanne Switzerland Coulsdon UK AOL Cochabamba Bolivia Accra Ghana Dial-up UUCP / SLIP / PPP Addis Ababa Ethiopia EasyLink Interpath Nairobi Kenya Dial-up UUCP US Regional Reps. (5) Dial-up sim.org Mail Hub MicroVAX simusa VAX 4400 PC Net Carlsbad California Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire Ferke Cote d’Ivoire Niamey Niger Ethernet Sebring Florida Dial-up UUCP Dial-up UUCP International Dial-up UUCP Other Individuals relay MicroVAX simcsg PC Net simintl PC Net Overseas Offices... Charlotte, North Carolina Other USA

  5. First Go-Round • Charges for actual phone costs sent to field offices • No charges back to sender • Field was responsible for billing • Inadequate logs of message traffic • Message billing was inaccurate and not realistic

  6. Goals for E-Mail Billing • Charge the sender • Let charges reflect actual cost • Remove the billing from the field • Use existing inter-office charge mechanisms • Recover phone costs

  7. Implementation • Access Database • Monthly Data Import • Processing Steps • Calculations • Message Processing

  8. Implementation - Access Database • Paying users, unique by e-mail address • Billing ID • Pay to Send flag • Pay to Receive flag • Misc. demographic information • Site definitions • Domain name • Billing ID • Import Tables

  9. Implementation - Monthly Import • Message log: to-address, from-address, date, time, size (bytes) • Monthly transmittal summary by site: total bytes, total seconds, total messages • Telephone charges from international carrier by site on diskette

  10. Implementation - Processing • Import monthly data • Calculate overhead $ by site • Process message log, create billing file • Sanity checks: • Check $ billed against phone bill • Check # of billable messages against # billed • Massage data if necessary & do again

  11. Implementation - Calculations

  12. Implementation - Process Messages 1) Determine origination cost (if any) 2) Determine destination cost (if any) 3) Now, who pays? a) Receiving site pays all messages? b) Originator a paying user? c) Recipient a paying user? d) Sender a billable site? e) Receiver a billable site?

  13. Current State of Affairs • ~30,000 messages per month • ~8,000 are billable • ~$4,500 per month • Overhead is currently $0.30 per message • Per ‘K’ costs range from $0.04 to $0.11 • 2+ hours per month to process bill • 30K message size filter

  14. ToDo List • Need better address rewriting • Address book maintenance • Fields want messages compressed (ZIP) • ESMTP Support • Direct Internet Connection

  15. Questions and Comments

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